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UNIVERSALISM 
IN THE EARLY CHURCH. 



UNIVERSALISM 



PREVAILING DOCTRINE 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



CHRISTIAN CHURCH 

DURING ITS FIRST 

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS 

Wit§ fiutfyovitus and Cjfracfe 

/ 

By J. W. HANSON, D. D. 
6 ®eos iravra iv Tracriv — / Corinthians , xv. 28. 



Boston and Chicago 

UNIVERSALIS! PUBLISHING HOUSE 

1899 

c 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

Library of Congre«% 

Office f thd ^ 

DEC 15/999 ^ 

Begister of Copyright 



49468 

Copyright. 

UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE. 

A. D. 1899. 



SECOND COP/, 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction. 

Page. 

I The Earliest Creeds ----- 5 

II Early Christianity a Cheerful Religion - - 17 

III Origin of Endless Punishment - 36 

IV Doctrines of Mitigation and of Reserve - 53 
V Two Kindred Topics - - - - 6f 

VI The Apostles' Immediate Successors - - 70 

VII Three Gnostic Sects ----- go 

VIII The Sibylline Oracles ----- Q 6 

IX Pantasnus and Clement - 103 

X Origen 129 

XI Origen — Continued 165 

XII The Eulogists of Ongen - 181 

XIII A Third Century Group - 188 

XIV Minor Authorities 200 

XV Gregory Nazianzen 211 

XVI Theodore of Mopsuestia and the Nestorians - 216 

XVII A Notable Family 226 

XVIII Additional Authorities 244 

XIX The Deterioration of Christian Thought - 260 

XX Augustine — Deterioration Continued - - 271 

XXI Unsuccessful Attempts to Suppress Universalism 282 

XXII The Eclipse of Universalism •- 296 

XXIII Summary of Conclusions - - - 304 

v 



To 
%&. J. <§. Cattttodl, 5. f . 

AS A TOKEN OF FRIENDSHIP OF MANY YEARS DURATION, AND 
AS A MERITED, THOUGH AN INADEQUATE RECOGNITION 
OF LIFE-LONG AND VALUABLE SERVICE REN- 
DERED TO THE GREAT TRUTH TO WHICH 
THIS BOOK IS DEVOTED, IT IS AFFEC- 
TIONATELY INSCRIBED BY 
THE AUTHOR. 



FOREWORDS. 



The purpose of this book is to present some of the evi- 
dence of the prevalence in the early centuries of the Chris 
tian church, of the doctrine of the final holiness of all man- 
kind. The author has endeavored to give the language of 
the early Christians, rather than to paraphrase their words, or 
state their sentiments in his own language. He has also 
somewhat copiously quoted the statements of modern schol- 
ars, historians and critics, of all shades of opinion, instead of 
condensing them with his own pen. 

The large number of extracts which this course necessi- 
tates gives his pages a somewhat mosaic appearance, but he 
has preferred to sacrifice mere literary form to what seems 
larger utility. 

He has aimed to present irrefragable proofs that the doc- 
trine of Universal Salvation was the prevalent sentiment of 
the primitive Christian church. He believes his investigation 
has been somewhat thorough, for he has endeavored to con- 
sult not only all the fathers themselves, but the most distin- 
guished modern writers who have considered the subject. 

The first form of his manuscript contained a thousand 
copious notes, with citations of original Greek and Latin, 
but such an array was thought by judicious friends too 
formidable to attract the average reader, as well as too 
voluminous, and he has therefore retained only a fraction of 
the notes he had prepared. 

The opinions of Christians in the first few centuries 



x FOREWORDS. 

should predispose us to believe in their truthfulness, inas- 
much as they were nearest to the divine Fountain of our re- 
ligion. The doctrine of Universal Salvation was nowhere 
taught until they inculcated it. Where could they have 
obtained it but from the source whence they claim to have 
derived it — the New Testament? 

The author believes that the following pages show that 
Universal Restitution was the faith of the early Christians 
for at least the First Five Hundred Years of the Christian 
Era. J. W. Hanson. 

Chicago, October, 1899. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The surviving writings of the Christian Fathers, 
of the first four or five centuries of the Christian Era, 
abound in evidences of the prevalence of the doc- 
trine of universal salvation during those years. This 
important fact in the history of Christian eschatol- 
ogy was first brought out prominently in a volume, 
very valuable, and for its time very thorough: Hosea 
Ballou's "Ancient History of Universalism," (Bos- 
ton, 1828, 1842, 1872). Dr. Ballou's work has well 
been called "light in a dark place," but the quota- 
tions he makes are but a fraction of what subsequent 
researches have discovered. Referring to Dr. Bal- 
lou's third edition with "Notes" by the Rev. A. St. 
John Chambre, A. M., and T. J. Sawyer, D.D. 
( i872),T. B. Thayer, D.D., observes in the Universal- 
ist Quarterly, April, 1872: ''As regards the addi- 
tions to the work by the editors, we must say that 
they are not as numerous nor as extensive as we had 
hoped they might be. It would seem as if the 
studies of our own scholars for more than forty 
years since the first edition, and the many new and 
elaborate works on the history of the church and its 
doctrines by eminent theologians and critics, should 
have furnished more witnesses to the truth, and 
larger extracts from the early literature of the 
church, than are found in the 'Notes.' With the ex- 



2 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

ception of three or four of them no important addi- 
tion is made to the contents of the work. If the 
Notes are to be considered as final, or the last glean- 
ings of the field, it shows how thoroughly Dr. Bal- 
lou did his work, notwithstanding the poverty of 
his resources, and the many and great disadvantages 
attending his first efforts. But we cannot help think- 
ing that something remains still to be said respect- 
ing some of the apostolic fathers and Chrysostom, 
Augustine and others; as well as concerning the 
gnostic sects, the report of whose opinions, it must 
be remembered, comes to us mostly from their ene- 
mies, or at least those not friendly to them." The 
want here indicated this volume aims to supply. 

Dr. Ballou's work was followed in 1878 by Dr. 
Edward Beecher's "History of the Doctrine of 
Future Retribution," a most truthful and candid 
volume, which adds much valuable material to that 
contained in Dr. Ballou's work. About the same 
time Canon Farrar published "Eternal Hope" 
(1878), and "Mercy and Judgment"( 1881 ), containing 
additional testimony showing that many of the Christ- 
ian writers in the centuries immediately following 
our Lord and his apostles, were Universalists. In 
addition to these a contribution to the literature of 
the subject was made by the Rev. Thomas Allin, a 
clergyman of the English Episcopal Church, in a 
work entitled "Universalism Asserted." Mr. Allin 
was led to his study of the patristic literature by find- 
ing a copy of Dr. Ballou's work in the British Mu- 
seum. Incited by its contents he microscopically 
searched the fathers, and found many valuable 
statements that incontestably prove that the most 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

and the best of the successors of the apostles incul- 
cated the doctrine of universal salvation. The de- 
fects of Mr. Allin's very scholarly work, from this 
writer's standpoint are, that he writes as an Episco- 
palian, merely from the view-point of the Nicene 
creed, to show by the example of the patristic 
writers that one can remain an Episcopalian and 
cherish the hope of universal salvation; and that he 
regards the doctrine as only a hope, and not a dis- 
tinct teaching of the Christian religion. Meanwhile, 
the fact of the early prevalence of the doctrine has 
been brought out incidentally in such works as the 
"Dictionary of Christian Biography," Farrar's 
"Lives of the Fathers," and other books, the salient 
statements and facts in all which will be found in 
these pages, which show that the most and best and 
ablest of the early fathers found the deliverance of 
all mankind from sin and sorrow specifically revealed 
in the Christian Scriptures. The author has not only 
quoted the words of the fathers themselves, but he 
has studiously endeavored, instead of his own words, 
to reproduce the language of historians, biographers, 
critics, scholars, and other writers of all schools of 
thought, and to demonstrate by these irrefragable 
testimonies that Universalism was the primitive 
Christianity. 

The quotations, index, and other references indi- 
cated by foot notes, will show the reader that a large 
number of volumes has been consulted, and it is 
believed by the author that no important work in the 
copious literature of the theme has been omitted. 

The plan of this work does not contemplate the 
presentation of the Scriptural evidence — which to 



4 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Universalists is demonstrative — that our Lord and 
his apostles taught the final and universal prevalence 
of holiness and happiness. That work is thoroughly- 
done in a library of volumes in the literature of the 
Universalist Church. Neither is it the purpose 
of the author of this book to write a history of the 
doctrine; but his sole object is to show that those 
who obtained their religion almost directly from the 
lips of its author, understood it to teach the doctrine 
of universal salvation. 

Not only are copious citations given from the 
ancient Universalists themselves, but abstracts and 
compendiums of their opinions, and testimonials as 
to their scholarship and saintliness, are presented 
from the most eminent authors who have written of 
them. No equal number of the church's early saints 
has ever received such glowing eulogies from so 
many scholars and critics as the ancient Universalists 
have extorted from such authors as Socrates, Ne- 
ander, mosheim, huet, dorner, dletelmaier, 
Beecher, Schaff, Plumptre, Bigg, Farrar, Bun- 
sen, Cave, Westcott, Robertson, Butler, Allen, 
De Pressense, Gieseler, Lardner, Hagenbach, 
Blunt, and others, not professed Universalists. 
Their eulogies found in these pages would alone jus- 
tify the publication of this volume. 



UNIVERSALISM 
IN THE EARLY CENTURIES, 



i. 

THE EARLIEST CREEDS. 

An examination of the earliest Christian creeds 
and declarations of Christian opinion discloses the 
fact that no formulary of Christian 
Teaching of the belief for several centuries after 
Twelve Apostles. Christ contained anything incompati- 
ble with the broad faith of the Gos- 
pel — the universal redemption of mankind from sin. 
The earliest of all the documents pertaining to this 
subject is the " Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. " * 
This work was discovered in manuscript in the 
library of the Holy Sepulchre, in Constantinople, by 
Philotheos Bryennios, and published in 1875. It 
was bound with Chrysostom's " Synopsis of the 
Works of the Old Testament," the "Epistle of Bar- 
nabas," A. D. 70-120 — two epistles of Clement, and 
less important works. The "Teaching" was quoted 
by Clement of Alexandria, by Eusebius and by Ath- 
anasius, so that it must have been recognized as early 
as A. D. 200. It was undoubtedly composed be- 

J AIAAXH TON AQAEKA AIIOSTOAON. 
S 



6 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

tweenA. D. 120 and 160. An American edition of 
the Greek text and an English translation were pub- 
lished in New York in 1884, with notes by Roswell 
D. Hitchcock and Francis Brown, professors in 
Union Theological Seminary, New York, from which 
we quote. It is entirely silent on the duration of 
punishment. It describes the two ways of life and 
death, in its sixteen chapters, and indicates the re- 
wards and the penalties of the good way and of the 
evil way as any Universalist would do — as Origen 
and Basil did. God is thanked for giving spiritual 
food and drink and " seonian life." The last chap- 
ter exhorts Christians to watch against the terrors 
and judgments that shall come "when the earth 
shall be given unto his (the world deceiver's) hands. 
Then all created men shall come into the fire of 
trial, and many shall be made to stumble and per- 
ish. But they that endure in their faith shall be 
saved from this curse. And then shall appear the 
signs of the truth ; first, the sign of an* opening in 
heaven ; then the sign of the trumpet's sound ; and, 
thirdly, the resurrection from the dead, yet not of 
all, but as it hath been said : ' The Lord will come 
and all Lis saints with him. Then shall the world 
see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven. ' " 
This resurrection must be regarded as a moral one, 
as it is not " of all the dead," but of the saints only. 
There is not a whisper in this ancient document of 
endless punishment, and its testimony, therefore, is 
that that dogma was not in the second century re- 
garded as a part of " the teaching of the apostles. " 
When describing the endlessness of being it uses the 
word athanasias, but describes the glory of Christ, as 



THE EARLIEST CREEDS. 7 

do the Scriptures, as for ages (ezs tons aionas). In 
Chapter XI occurs this language : ' ' Every sin shall 
be forgiven, but this sin shall not be forgiven" (the 
sin of an apostle asking money for his services) ; but 
that form of expression is clearly in accordance with 
the Scriptural method of adding force to an affirma- 
tive by a negative, arid vice versa, as in the words 
(Matt, xviii: 22) : " Not until seven times, but until 
seventy times seven." In fine, the "Teaching" 
shows throughout that the most ancient doctrine of 
the church, after the apostles, was in perfect har- 
mony with universal salvation. Cyprian, A. D. 250, 
in a letter to his son Magnus, tells us that in addi- 
tion to the baptismal formula converts were asked, 
" Dost thou believe in the remission of sins and eter- 
nal life through the holy church?" 

"The Apostles' Creed," so called, the oldest ex- 
isting authorized declaration of Christian faith in the 
shape of a creed was probably in ex- 
The Apostles' istence in various modified forms for 

Creed. a century or so before the beginning 

of the Fourth Century, when it took its 
present shape, possibly between A. D. 250am! 350. It 
is first found in Rufinus, who wrote at the end of the 
Fourth and the beginning of the Fifth Century. No 
allusion is made to it before these dates by Justin Mar- 
tyr, Clement, Origen, the historian EusEBius,or any 
of their contemporaries, all whom make declarations of 
Christian belief, nor is there any hint in antecedent 
literature that any such document existed. Individ- 
ual declarations of faith were made, however, quite 
unlike the pseudo Apostles' Creed, by Iren^eus, Ter- 
tullian, Cyprian, Gregory Thaumaturgus, etc. 



8 UNIVERSALIS*! IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Hagenbach 2 assures us that it was "probably in- 
spired of various confessions of faith used by the 
primitive church in the baptismal service. Mosheim 
declares: "All who have any knowledge of an- 
tiquity confess unanimously that the opinion (that the 
apostles composed the Apostles' Creed) is a mistake, 
and has no foundation. 3 " 

The clauses "the Holy Catholic Church," "the 
communion of Saints," "the forgiveness of sins," 
were added after A. D. 250. "He descended into 
hell" was later than the compilation of the original 
creed — as late as A. D. 359. The document is here 
given. The portion in Roman type was probably 
adopted in the earlier part or middle of the Second 
Century 4 and was in Greek; the Italic portion was 
added later by the Roman Church, and was in Latin: 

"I believe in God the Father Almighty (maker 
of heaven and earth) and in Jesus Christ his only son 
our Lord, who was (conceived) by the Holy Ghost, 
born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pi- 
late, was crucified {dead) and buried, (He descended 
into hell) . The third day he arose again from the 
dead; he ascended into heaven and sitteth at the 
right hand of (God) the Father (Almighty). From 
thence he shall come to judge the quick and the 
dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy (Cath- 
olic) Church; (the communion of saints) the forgive- 
ness of sins; the resurrection of the body; (and the 
life everlasting) 5 '. Amen. " 

2 Text-book of Christian Doctrine; Gieseler's Text Book: Neander. 
3 Murdoch's Mosheim Inst., Eccl. Hist. 
4 Bunsen's Hippolytus and His Age. 
5 Aionion, the original of "everlasting." 



THE EARLIEST CREEDS. 9 

It will be seen that not a word is here tittered of 
the duration of punishment. The later form speaks 
of "aionian life," but does not refer to aionian 
death, or punishment. It is incredible that this 
declaration of faith, made at a time when the world 
was ignorant of what constituted the Christian be- 
lief, and which was made for the purpose of inform- 
ing the world, should not convey a hint of so vital a 
doctrine as that of endless punishment, if at that 
time that dogma was a tenet of the church. 

The oldest credal statement by the Church of 
Rome says that Christ ' 'shall come to judge the quick 
and the dead," and announces belief 
The Oldest Credal in the resurrection of the body. The 
Statement. oldest of the Greek constitutions de- 

clares belief in the ''resurrection of 
the flesh, remission of sins, and the aionian life." 
And the Alexandrian statement speaks of * 'the life," 
but there is not a word of everlasting death or pun- 
ishment in any of them. And this is all that the 
most ancient creeds contain on the subject. 6 

In a germinal form of the Apostles' Creed, Ire- 
NiEus, A. D. 180, says that the judge, at the final as- 
size, will cast the wicked into aionian fire. It is sup- 
posed that he used the word aionian, for the Greek 
in which he wrote has perished, and the Latin trans- 
lation reads, "ignem ceternum" 

As O rig en uses the same word, and expressly 
says it denotes limited duration, Iren^us's testimony 



8 The Apostles' Creed at first omitted the Fatherhood of God, and 
in its later forms did not mention God's love for men, his reign, repentance, 
or the new life. Athanase Coquerel the Younger, First Hist. Transforma- 
tions of Christianity, page 208. 



io UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

does not help the doctrine of endless punishment, nor 
can it be quoted to reenforce that of universal sal- 
vation. Dr. Beecher thinks that Iren^eus taught 
" a final restitution of all things to unity and order 
by the annihilation of all the finally impenitent " 7 — 
a pseudo-Universalism. 

Even Tertullian, born about A. D. 160, though 
his personal belief was fearfully partialistic, could 
not assert that his pagan-born doc- 
Tertullian's trine was generally accepted by 

Belief. Christians, and when he formed a 

creed for general acceptance he en- 
tirely omitted his lurid theology. It will be seen that 
Tertullian's creed like that of Iren^eus is one of the 
earlier forms of the so-called Apostles' Creed : 8 ' ' We 
believe in one only God, omnipotent, maker of the 
world, and his son Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin 
Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, raised from the 
dead the third day, received into the heavens, now 
sitting at the right hand of the Father, and who shall 
come to judge the living and the dead, through the 
resurrection of the flesh. " Tertullian did not put his 
private belief into his creed, and at that time he had 
not discovered that worst of dogmas relating to man, 
total depravity. In fact, he states the opposite. 
He says: "There is a portion of God in the soul. 
In the worst there is something good, and in the best 
something bad." Neander says that Tertullian 
" held original goodness to be indelible." 

The next oldest creed, the first declaration author- 



7 History, Doct. Fut. Ret., pp. 198-205. 

• See Lamson's Church of the First Three Centuries. 



THE EARLIEST CREEDS. II 

fzed by a consensus of the whole church, was the 
Nicene, A. D. 325; completed in 381 
The Nicene Creed, at Constantinople. Its sole reference 
to the future world is in these words : 
"I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life 
of the world (aeon) to come. " It does not contain a 
syllable referring to endless punishment, though the 
doctrine was then professed by a portion of the church, 
and was insisted upon by some, though it was not gen- 
erally enough held to be stated as the average belief. 
So dominant was the influence of the Greek fa- 
thers, who had learned Christianity in their native 
tongue, in the language in which it was announced, 
and so little had Tertullian's cruel ideas prevailed, 
that it was not even attempted to make the horrid 
sentiment a part of the creed of the church. More- 
over, Gregory Nazianzen presided over the council 
in Constantinople, in which the Nicean creed was 
finally shaped — the Niceo-Constantinopolitan creed — 
and as he was a Universalist, and as the clause, ' 'I 
believe in the life of the world to come," was added 
by Gregory of Nyssa, an "unflinching advocate of 
extreme Universalism,. and the very flower of ortho- 
doxy," it must be apparent that the consensus of 
Christian sentiment was not yet anti-Universalistic. 

Thus the general sentiment in the church from 
325 A. D. to 381 A. D. demanded that the life beyond the 
grave be stated, and as there is no hint 
General Sentiment of the existence of a world of torment, 
in the Fourth how can the conclusion be escaped 

Century. that Christian faith did not then in- 

clude the thought of endless woe?' 
Would a council, composed even in part of believers 



12 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

in endless torment, permit a Universalist to preside, 
and another to shape its creed, and not even attempt 
to give expression to that idea? Is not the Nicene 
creed a witness, in what it does not say, to the broader 
faith that must have been the religion of the century 
that adopted it? 

It is historical (See Socrates's Ecclesiastical His- 
tory) that the four great General Councils held in 
the first four centuries — those at Nice, Constanti- 
nople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon — gave expression to 
no condemnation of universal restoration, though, as 
will be shown, the doctrine had been prevalent all 
along. 

In the Nicene creed adopted A. D. 325, by three 
hundred and twenty to two hundred and eighteen 
bishops, the only reference to the future world is 
where it is said that Christ "will come again to judge 
the living and the dead. " This is the original form, 
subsequently changed. A.D.341 the assembled bishops 
at Antioch made a declaration of faith in which these 
words occur: "The Lord Jesus Christ will come 
again with glory and power to judge the living and 
the dead." A.D. 346 the bishops presented a declara- 
tion to the Emperor Constans affirming that Jesus 
Christ "shall come at the consummation of the ages, 
to judge the living and the dead, and render to every 
one according to his works. " The synod at Rimini, 
A.D. 359, affirmed that Christ "descended to the lower 
parts of the earth, and disposed matters there, at the 
sight of whom the door-keepers trembled — and at the 
last day he will come in his Father's glory to render 
to every one according to his deeds. " This declara- 
tion opens the gates of mercy by recognizing the 



THE EARLIEST CREEDS. 13 

proclamation of the Gospel to the dead, and, as it 
was believed that when Christ preached in Hades the 
doors were opened and all those in ward were re- 
leased, the words recited at Rimini that he ' 'disposed 
matters there," are very significant. 

The Nicene and Constantinopolitan creeds, printed 
in one, will exhibit the nature of the changes made 
at Constantinople, and will show that the "life to 
come" and not the post-mortem woe of sinners, was 
the chief thought with the early Christians. (The 
Nicene is here printed in Roman type, and the Con- 
stantinopolitan in Italic.) 

' 'We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, 
Maker of (heaven and earthy and) all things visible and 
invisible, and in one Lord Jesus 
The Niceo-Con- Christ, the only begotten Son of God, 
stantinopolitan begotten of the Father before all 
Creed * worlds?) only begotten, that is, of the 

substance of the Father ; God of God, 
Light of Light, very God of Very God, begotten not 
made; being of one substance with the Father, by 
whom all things were made, [transposed to the be- 
ginning] the things in heaven and things in earth. 
Who for us men and for our salvation came down 
(from heaven) and was incarnate (of the Holy Ghost 
and the Virgin Mary) and made man (and was cruci- 
fied for us under Pontius Pilate), and suffered (and 
was buried), and rose again the third day (according 
to the Scriptures), who ascended into heaven (and sit - 
teth on the right hand of the Father) and cometh 
again (in glory) to judge quick and dead (of whose 
kingdom there shall be no end). And in the Holy 
Ghost, (the Lord and giver of life, who proceedeth 



14 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

from the Father, who with the Father and the Son, 
together is worshiped and glorified; who spake by the 
prophets; in one holy Catholic, Apostolic Church; we ac- 
knowledge one baptism for the remissidn of sins; and 
we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of 
the world to come.)" 9 

This last clause was not in the original Nicene 
creed, but was added in the Constantinopolitan. The 
literal rendering of the Greek is "the life of the age 
about to come. " 10 

The first Christians, it will be seen, said in their 
creeds, "I believe in the seonian life;" later, they 
modified the phrase "seonian life," to "the life of the 
coming aeon," showing that the phrases are equiva- 
lent. But not a word of endless punishment. "The 
life of the age to come" was the first Christian creed, 
and later, O rig en himself declares his belief in 
seonian punishment, and in seonian life beyond. 
How, then, could seonian punishment have been re- 
garded as endless? 

The differences of opinion that existed among the 
early Christians are easily accounted for, when we re- 
member that they had been Jews or Heathens, who 
had brought from their previous religious associations 
all sorts of ideas, and were disposed to retain them and 
reconcile them with their new religion. Faith in 
Christ, and the acceptance of his teachings, could not 
at once eradicate the old opinions, which, in some 
cases, remained long, and caused honest Christians 
to differ from each other. As will be shown, while 
the Sibylline Oracles predisposed some of the fa- 

9 Hort's Two Dissertations, pp. 106, 138-147. 

10 KCU £<DY)V TOV fliWoVTOS dt(OJ/OS. 



THE EARLIEST CREEDS. 15 

thers to Universalism, Philo gave others a tendency 
to the doctrine of annihilation, and Enoch to endless 
punishment. 

Thus the credal declarations of the Christian 
church for almost four hundred years are entirely 

void of the lurid doctrine with which 
Statements of the they afterwards blazed for more than 
Early Councils. a thousand years. The early creeds 

contain no hint of it, and no whisper 
of condemnation of the doctrine of universal restora- 
tion as taught by Clement, Origen, the Gregories, 
Basil the Great, and multitudes besides. Discussions 
and declarations on the Trinity, and contests over ho- 
moonsion (consubstantial) and homoiousion (of like 
substance) engrossed the energy of disputants, and 
filled libraries of volumes, but the doctrine of the 
great fathers remained unchallenged. Neither the Con- 
cilium Nicaeum, A.D.325, nor theConcilium Constan- 
tinopolitanum, A. D. 3 81, nor the Concilium Chalcedon- 
enese, A. D . 45 1 , lisped a syllable of the doctrine of man 's 
final woe. The reticence of all the ancient formularies of 
faith concerning endless punishment at the same time 
that the great fathers were proclaiming universal 
salvation, as appears later on in these pages, is strong 
evidence that the former doctrine was not then ac- 
cepted. It is apparent that the early Christian 
church did not dogmatize on man's final destiny. It 
was engrossed in getting established among men the 
great truth of God's universal Fatherhood, as re- 
vealed in the incarnation, ' 'God in Christ, reconcil- 
ing the world unto himself." Some taught endless 
punishment for a portion of mankind; others, the 
annihilation of the wicked; others had no definite 



16 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

opinion on human destiny; but the larger part, es- 
pecially from Clement of Alexandria on for three 
hundred years, taught universal salvation. It is in- 
supposable that endless punishment was a doctrine 
of the early church, when it is seen that not one of 
the early creeds embodied it." u 

11 The germ of all the earlier declarations of faith had been formulated 
even before A. D. 150. The reader can here consult the original Greek of the 
earliest declaration of faith as given in Harnack's Outlines of the History of 
Dogma, Funk & Wagnall's edition of 1893, pp. 44, 45: 

7riOT£va> els Oeov irarepa iravroKpaTopa' kcu els Xpicrrov 
'Iyjctovv, vlov olvtov tov fxovayevrj, tov Kvptov rjix&v, tov 
yevvrjOevra Ik TrvevfxaTos dytov kcu Mapias ty}s 7rap0evov, tov 
e7rt Uovtlov UlXoltov CTTavpoiOevTa kcu Ta<peVra, rfj rpirr) rj^epa 
dvacTavra ck veKpiov, avafiavTa els tovs ovpavovs, kol$ rjfievov 
ev 8e£ia rov naTpos, oOev epyeTcu Kpwcu £<ovTas Kat vKepovs' 
kcu els 7rvevfia ayiov, ayuxv eKKXrjcrLav, a<j>ecnv djuapriaiv, crap/cos 
ava<TTa(Tiv° 



II. 

EARLY CHRISTIANITY A CHEERFUL RE- 
LIGION. 

When our Lord announced his religion this 
world was in a condition of unutterable cor- 
ruption, wretchedness and gloom. 
Darkness at the Slavery, poverty, vice that the pen 
Advent. j s unw iHi n g to name, almost univer- 

sally prevailed, and even religion 
partook of the general degradation. 1 Decadence, 
depopulation, insecurity of property, person and 
life, according to Taine, were everywhere. 
Philosophy taught that it would be better 
for man never to have been created. In the 
first century Rome held supreme sway. 2 Nations 
had been destroyed by scores, and the civilized world 
had lost half of its population by the sword. In the 
first century forty out of seventy years were years of 
famine, accompanied by plague and pestilence. 
There were universal depression and deepest melan- 
choly. When men were thus overborne with the 
gloom and horror of error and sin, into their night of 
darkness came the religion of Christ. Its announce- 
ments were all of hope and cheer. Its language 

iMartial, Juvenal, Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius, and other heathen writers, 
describe the well-nigh universal depravity and depression of the so-called 
civilized world. In Corinth the Acrocorinthus was occupied by a temple to 
the goddess of luBt. 

2 Uhlhorn's Conflict of Christianity and Paganism. 

17 



18 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

was, ' ' Come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy 
laden and I will give yoti rest." "Rejoice in the 
Lord always; again I will say, rejoice." " We re- 
joice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. " Men 
were invited to accept the tidings of great joy. John, 
the herald of Jesus, was a recluse, mortifying body 
and spirit, but Jesus said, "John came neither eat- 
ing nor drinking-, but the Son of Man came eating 
and drinking." He forbade all anxiety and care 
among his followers, and exhorted all to be as trust- 
ful as are the lilies of the field and the fowls of the 
air. Says Matthew Arnold, "Christ professed to 
bring in happiness. All the words that belong to his 
mission, Gospel, kingdom of God, Savior, grace, 
peace, living water, bread of life, are brimful of 
promise and joy. " And his cheerful, joyful religion 
at once won its way by its messages of peace and 
tranquillity, and for a while its converts were every- 
where characterized by their joyfulnessand cheerful- 
ness. Haweis writes: "The three first centuries 
of the Christian church are almost idyllic in their 
simplicity, sincerity and purity. There is less ad- 
mixture of evil, less intrusion of the world, the flesh, 
and the devil, more simple-hearted goodness, ear- 
nestness and reality to be found in the space between 
Nero and Const antine than in any other three cen- 
turies from A. D. IOOtoA. D. l8oO. " 3 DE PRESSENSE 

calls the early era of the church its * ' blessed child- 
hood, all calmness and simplicity." 4 Cave, in " Lives 
of the Fathers," states: "The noblest portion of 
church history * * * the most considerable age 

^Conquering Cross. Forewords. 
*Early Years of the Christian Church. 



EARLY CHRISTIANITY. ig 

of the church, the years from EusEBiusto Basil the 
Great." 

Christianity was everywhere at first, a religion of 
"sweetness and light." The Greek fathers exem- 
plified all these qualities, and Cle- 
" Sweetness and ment and Origen were ideals of its 
Light." perfect spirit. But from Augustine 

downward the Latin reaction, prompt- 
ed by the tendency of men in all ages to escape the 
exactions laid upon the soul by thought, and who flee 
to external authority to avoid the demands of reason, 
was away from the genius of Christian ty, until Au- 
gustinianism ripened into Popery, and the beautiful 
system of the Greek fathers was succeeded by the 
nightmare of the theology of the mediaeval centuries, 
and later of Calvinism and Puritanism. 5 Had the 
church followed the prevailing spirit of the ante- 
Nicene Fathers it would have conserved the best 
thought of Greece, the divine ideals of Plato, and 
joined them to the true interpretation of Christian- 
ity, and we may venture to declare that it would thus 
have continued the career of progress that had ren- 
dered the first three centuries so marvelous in their 
character; a progress that would have continued with 
accelerated speed, and Christendom would have 
widened its borders and deepened its sway immeas- 
urably. With the prevalence of the Latin language 
the East and the West grew apart, and the latter, 
more and more discarding reason, and controlled, 
by the iron inflexibility of a semi-pagan secular gov- 
ernment, gave Roman Catholicism its opportunity. 

6 Allen's Continuity of Christian Thought. 



20 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

The influence of the ascetic religions of the Asi- 
atic countries, especially Buddhism, contaminated 
Christianity, resulting later in celib- 
Oriental acy, monasteries, convents, hermits, 

Asceticism. and all the worser elements of Ca- 

tholicism in the Middle Ages. 6 At the 
first contact Christianity absorbed more than it mod- 
ified, till in the later ages the alien force became su- 
preme. In fact, orientalism was already beginning 
to mar the beautiful simplicity of Christianity when 
John wrote his Gospel to counteract it. Schaff, in 
his " History of the Christian Church," remarks: 
All the germs of (Christian) asceticism appear in 
the third century. * * * The first two Christian 
hermits were not till Paul of Thebes, A. D. 250, and 
Anthony of Egypt, A. D. 270, appeared. Asceti- 
cism was in existence long before Christ. Jews, 
Nazarites, Essenes, Therapeutae, Persians, Indians, 
Buddhists, all originated this Oriental heathenism. 
* * * The religion of the Chinese, Buddhism, 
Brahmanism, the religion of Zoroaster and of the 
Egyptians, more or less leavened Christianity in its 
earliest stages. So did Greek and Roman paganism 
with which the apostles and their followers came 
into direct contact. 

The doctrines of substitutional atonement, resur. 
rection of the body, native depravity, and endless 
punishment, are not lisped in the earliest creeds or 
formulas. 7 The earliest Christians (Allen: Christian 
Thought) taught that man is the image of God, and 
that the in-dwelling Deity will lead him to holiness. 

6 Milman's Latin Christianity. 
7 Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine. 



EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 21 

In Alexandria, the center of Greek culture and Chris- 
tian thought, "more thoroughly Greek than Athens 
in its days of renown," the theological atmosphere 
was more nearly akin to that of the Universalist 
church of the present day than to that of any other 
branch of the Christian church during the last fifteen 
centuries. 8 

The wonderful progress made during the first 
three centuries by the simple, pure and cheerful faith 
Wonderful °^ ear ly Christianity shows us what 

Progress of its growth might have been made had 

Christianity at not the morose spirit of Tertullian, 
First - reinforced by the "dark shadow of 

Augustine, "transformed it. As early as the beginning 
of the second century the heathen Pliny, the pro- 
praetor of Bithynia, reported to the emperor that his 
province was so filled with Christians that the worship 
of the heathen deities had nearly ceased. And they 
were not only of the poor and despised, but of all 
conditions of life — omnis ordinis. Mil ner thinks that 
Asia Minor was at this time quite thoroughly evan- 
gelized. As early as the close of the Second Century 
there were not only many converts from the humbler 
ranks, but "the main strength of Christianity lay in 
the middle, perhaps in the mercantile classes." 
Gibbon says the Christians were not one-twentieth 
part of the Roman Empire, till Constantine gave 
them the sanction of his authority, but Robertson 

8 The early Christians never transferred the rigidity of the Jewish Sab- 
bath to Sunday. Both Saturday and Sunday were observed religiously till 
towards the end of the second century — then Sunday alone was kept. Fast- 
ing and even kneeling in prayer was forbidden on Sunday with the early 
Christians. Ancient Christian writers always mean Saturday by the word 
"Sabbath." 



22 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

estimates them at one-fifth of the whole, and in some 
districts as the majority. 9 Origen: ''Against Celsus" 
says: "At the present day (A. D. 240) not only rich 
men, but persons of rank, and delicate and high-born 
ladies, receive the teachers of Christianity; and the 
religion of Christ is better known than the teachings 
of the best philosophers." And Arnobius testifies 
that Christians included orators, grammarians, rhet- 
oricians, lawyers, physicians, and philosophers. And 
it was precisely their bright and cheerful views of 
life and death, of God's universal fatherhood and 
man's universal brotherhood — the divinity of its 
ethical principles and the purity of its professors, 
that account for the wonderful progress of Christian- 
ity during the three centuries that followed our 
Lord's death. The pessimism of the oriental relig- 
ions ; the corruption and folly of the Greek and Ro- 
man mythology; the unutterable wickedness of the 
mass of mankind, and the universal depression of 
society invited its advance, and gave way before it. 
Justin Martyr wrote that in his time prayers and 
thanksgivings were offered in ' 'the name of the Cru- 
cified, among every race of men, Greek or barba- 
rian." Tertullian states that all races and tribes, 
even to farthest Britain, had heard the news of -salva- 
tion. He declared: "We are but of yesterday, and 
lo we fill the whole empire — your cities, your islands, 
your fortresses, your municipalities, your councils, 
nay even the camp, the tribune, the decory, the pal- 



9 The Emperor Maximin in one of his edicts says that "Almost all 
had abandoned the worship of their ancestors for the new faith." 



EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 23 

ace, the senate, the forum. " 10 Chrysostom testifies 
that "the isles of Britain in the heart of the ocean 
had been converted. " 

The talismanic word of the Alexandrian fathers, 
as of the New Testament, was father. This word, 
as now, unlocked all mysteries, 
God's solved all problems, and explained 

Fatherhood. all the enigmas of time and eternity. 

Holding" God as Father, punishment 
was held to be remedial, and therefore restorative, 
and final recovery from sin universal. It was only 
when the Father was lost sight of in the judge and 
tyrant, under the baneful reign of Augustinianism, 
that Deity was hated, and that Catholics transferred 
to Mary, and later, Protestants gave to Jesus that su- 
preme love that is due alone to the Universal Father. 
For centuries in Christendom after the Alexandrine 
form of Christianity had waned, the Fatherhood of 
God was a lost truth, and most of the worst errors of 
the modern creeds are due to that single fact, more 
than to all other causes. 

It was during those happy years more than in any 
subsequent three centuries, that, as Jerome ob- 
served, "the blood of Christ was yet warm in the 
breasts of Christians." Says the accurate historian, 
Cave, in his "Primitive Christianity:" "Here he 
will find a piety active and zealous, shining through 
the blackest clouds of malice and cruelty ; afflicted in- 

^Hesterni sumus et vestra omnes implevimus urbes, insulas , castella, 
tnunicifiia, conciliabula, castra i/>sa % tribus, decurias, fialatium, senatum, 
forum. ApoLc. XXXVII. Mosheim, however, thinks that the "African 
orator," who is inclined to exaggerate, "rhetoricates" a little here. The 
primitive Christians exulted at the wonderful progress and diffusion of the 
Gospel, 



24 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

nocence triumphant, notwithstanding all the powerful 
or politic attempts of men or devils; a patience un- 
conquerable under the biggest temptations ; a charity 
truly catholic and unlimited ; a simplicity and upright 
carriage in all transactions; a sobriety and temper- 
ance remarkable to the admiration of their enemies ; 
and, in short, he will see the divine and holy precepts 
of the Christian religion drawn down into action, and 
the most excellent genius and spirit of the Gospel 
breathing in the hearts and lives of these good old 
Christians. " 

' 'Christianity, " says Milm an, ' 'was almost from the 
first a Greek religion. Its primal records were all 
written in the Greek language ; it was 
1 m y promulgated with the greatest rapid- 

Religion, ity an d success among nations either 

of Greek descent, or those which had 
been Grecized by the conquest of Alexander. In 
their polity the Grecian churches were a federation 
of republics. " At the first, art, literature, life, were 
Greek, cheerful, sunny, serene. The Latin type of 
character was morose, gloomy, characterized, says 
Milman, by "adherence to legal form; severe subor- 
dination to authority. The Roman Empire extended 
over Europe by a universal code, and by subordination 
to a spiritual Caesar as absolute as he was in civil 
obedience. Thus the original simplicity of the Chris- 
tian polity was entirely subverted; its pure democ- 
racy became a spiritual autocracy. The presbyters 
developed into bishops, the bishop of Rome became 
pope, and Christendom reflected Rome." But dur- 
ing the first three centuries this change had not taken 
place. "It is there, therefore, among the Alexan- 



EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 25 

drine fathers that we are to look to find Christianity 
in its pristine purity. The language, organization, 
writers, and Scriptures of the church in the first cen- 
turies were all Greek. The Gospels were every- 
where read in Greek, the commercial and literary 
language of the empire. The books were in Greek, 
and even in Gaul and Rome Greek was the liturgical 
language. The Octavius of Minucius Felix, and 
Novatian on the Trinity, were the earliest known 
works of Latin Christian literature. 11 
An Impressive Thought. 
The Greek Fathers derived their Universalism 
directly and solely from the Greek Scriptures. Noth- 
ing to suggest the doctrine existed in Greek or Latin 
literature, mythology, or theology; all current 
thought on matters of eschatology was utterly op- 
posed to any such view of human destiny. And, 
furthermore, the unutterable wickedness, degrada- 
tion and woe that filled the world would have in- 
clined the early Christians to the most pessimistic 
view of the future consistent with the teachings of 
the religion they had espoused. To know that, in 
those dreadful times, they derived the divine optim- 
ism of universal deliverance from sin and sorrow 
from the teachings of Christ and his apostles, should 
predispose every modern to agree with them. On 
this point Allin, in "Universalism Asserted," elo- 
quently says: 

"The church was born into a world of whose moral 



"Milman's Latin Christianity, "The breadth of the best Greek Fathers, 
such as Origen, or Clement of Alexandria, is a thousand times superior to 
the dry, harsh narrowness of the Latins." Athanase Coquerel the Younger, 
First Hist. Trans, of Christianity, p. 215. 



26 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

rottenness few have or can have any idea. Even the 
sober historians of the later Roman Empire have 
their pages tainted with scenes impossible to trans- 
late. Lusts the foulest, debauchery to us happily in- 
conceivable, raged on every side. To assert even 
faintly the final redemption of all this rottenness, 
whose depths we dare not try to sound, required the 
firmest faith in the larger hope, as an essential part 
of the Gospel. But this is not all; in a peculiar 
sense the church was militant in the early centuries. 
It was engaged in, at times, a struggle, for life or 
death, with a relentless persecution. Thus it must 
have seemed in that age almost an act of treason to 
the cross to teach that, though dying unrepentant, 
the bitter persecutor, or the votary of abominable 
lusts, should yet in the ages to come find salvation. 
Such considerations help us to see the extreme 
weight attaching even to the very least expression in 
the fathers which involves sympathy with the 
larger hope, * * * especially so when we con- 
sider that the idea of mercy was then but little 
known, and that truth, as we conceive it, was not 
then esteemed a duty. As the vices of the early cen- 
turies were great, so were their punishments cruel. 
The early fathers wrote when the wild beasts of the 
arena tore alike the innocent and the guilty, limb 
from limb, amid the applause even of gently- nur- 
tured women; they wrote when the cross, with its 
living burden of agony, was a common sight, and 
evoked no protest. They wrote when every minister 
of justice was a torturer, and almost every criminal 
court a petty inquisition ; when every household of 
the better class, even among Christians, swarmed 



EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 27 

with slaves liable to torture, to scourging, to mutila- 
tion, at the caprice of a master or the frown of a mis- 
tress. Let all these facts be fully weighed, and a 
conviction arises irresistibly, that, in such an age, no 
idea of Universalism could have originated unless in- 
spired from above. If, now, when criminals are 
shielded from suffering with almost morbid care, 
men, the best of men, think with very little con- 
cern of the unutterable woe of the lost, how, I 
ask, could Universalism have arisen of itself in an 
age like that of the fathers? Consider further. The 
larger hope is not, we are informed, in the Bible ; it 
is not, we know, in the heart of man naturally; still 
less was it there in days such as those we have de- 
scribed, when mercy was unknown, when the dear- 
est interest of the church forbade its avowal. But 
it is found in many, very many, ancient fathers, and 
often, in the very broadest form, embracing e very 
fallen spirit. Where, then, did they find it? Whence 
did they import this idea? Can we doubt that the 
fathers could only have drawn it, as their writin gs 
testify, from the Bible itself?" 

Testimony of the Catacombs. 
An illuminating side-light is cast on the opinions 
of the early Christians by the inscriptions and em- 
blems on the monuments in the Roman Catacombs. 12 
It is well known that from the end of the First to 
the end of the Fourth Century the early Christians 
buried their dead, probably with the knowledge and 
consent of the pagan authorities, in subterranean gal- 
leries excavated in the soft rock {tufa) that underlies 

12 Cutts, Turning Points of Church History. 



28 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Rome. These ancient cemeteries were first uncov- 
ered A. D. 1 5 78. Already sixty excavations have been 
made extending five hundred and eighty-seven miles. 
More than six, some estimates say eight, million 
bodies are known to have been buried between A. D. 72 
and A. D. 410. Eleven thousand epitaphs and inscrip- 
tions have been found ; few dates are between A. D. 72 
and 100; the most are from A. D. 150 toA.D. 410. 
The galleries are from three to five feet wide and 
eight feet high, and the niches for bodies are five 
tiers deep, one above another, each silent tenant in 
its separate cell. At the entrance of each cell is a 
tile or slab of marble, once securely cemented and 
inscribed with name, epitaph or emblem. 13 Haweis 
beautifully says in his " Conquering Cross:" " The 
public life of the early Christian was persecution 
above ground; his private life was prayer under- 
ground." The emblems and inscriptions are most 
suggestive. The principal device, scratched on 
slabs, carved on utensils and rings, and seen almost 
everywhere, is the Good Shepherd, surrounded by 
his flock and carrying a lamb. But most striking of 
all, he is found with a goat on his shoulder; which 
teaches us that even the wicked were at that early 
date regarded as the objects of the Savior's solici- 
tude, after departing from this life. 13 

Matthew Arnold has preserved this truth in his 
immortal verse: 14 

" He saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save!" 
So rang Tertullian's sentence on the side 

13 See DeRossi, Northcote, Withrow, etc., on the Catacombs. 

14 A suggestive thought in this connection is, that our Lord (Matt. xxv. 
33), calls those on his left hand "kidlings," "little kids," a term of tender- 
ness and regard. 



EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 29 

Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried, — 
"Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave, 
Whose sins once washed by the baptismal wave!" 

So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sighed, 

The infant Church, — of love she felt the tide 
Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave, 

And then she smiled, and in the Catacombs, 
With eyes suffused but heart inspired true, 

On those walls subterranean, where she hid 
Her head in ignominy, death and tombs, 

She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew 

And on his shoulders not a lamb, a kid! 

The picture is a "distinct protest" against the 
un- Christian sentiment then already creeping into 
the church from Paganism. 

Everywhere in the Catacombs is the anchor, em- 
blem of that hope which separated Christianity from 
Paganism. Another symbol is the fish, which 
plays a prominent part in Christian symbolry. It is 
curious and instructive to account for this ideograph. 
It is used as a cryptogram of Christ. The word is 
a sort of acrostic of the name and office of our Lord. 

The Greek word fish, in capitals — IX0Y2 — 
would be a secret cypher that would stand for our 
Lord's name, when men dared not 
Early Funereal write or speak it; and the word or 

Emblems. the picture of a fish meant to the 

Christian the name of his Savior ; 
and he wore as a charm a fish cut in ivory, or mother- 
of-pearl, on his neck living, and bore to his grave 
to be exhumed centuries after his death an effigy of 
a fish to signify his faith. These and the vine, the 
sheep, the dove, the ark, the palm and other em- 
blems in the Catacombs express only hope, faith, 
cheerful confidence. The horrid inventions of Aug- 



So UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

ustine, the cruel monstrosities of Angelo and Dante, 
and the abominations of the mediaeval theology were 
all unthought of then, and have no hint in the Cata- 
combs. 

Still more instructive are the inscriptions. As 
De Rossi observes, the most ancient inscriptions dif- 
fer from those of the Pagans "more by what they 
do not say than by what they do say." While the 
Pagans denote the rank or social position of their 
dead as clarissima femine, or lady of senatorial rank, 
Christian epigraphy is destitute of all mention of 
distinctions. Only the name and some expression of 
endearment and confidence are inscribed. Says 
Northcote: " They proceed upon the assumption 
that there is an incessant interchange of kindly offices 
between this world and the next, between the living 
and the dead. " Mankind is a brotherhood, and not 
a word can be found to show any thought of the mu- 
tilation of the great fraternity, and the consignment 
of any portion of it to final despair. Such are these 
among the inscriptions : '-''Pax tecum, Urania;" "Peace 
with thee, Urania;" "Semper in D. vivas, dulcis 
anima;" "Always in God mayest thou live, sweet 
soul;" "Mayest thou live in the Lord, and pray for 
us. " They had ' ' emigrated, " had been ' ' translated, " 
" born into eternity, " but not a word is found ex- 
pressive of doubt or fear, horror and gloom, such as 
in subsequent generations formed the btaple of the 
literature of death and the grave, and rendered the 
Christian graveyard, up to the beginning of the sev- 
enteenth century, a horrible place. The first Chris- 
tians regarded the grave as the doorway into a better 



EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 31 

world, and expressed only hope and trust in their 
emblems and inscriptions. 

Following are additional specimen epitaphs: 
"Irene in Pace. " "Here lies Marcia put to rest in a 
dream of peace." " Victor ina dormit" "Victoria 
sleeps;" "Zoticvs hie ad dormiendvnt" "Zoticus laid 
here to sleep;" "Raptvs eterne domvs," "Snatched 
home eternally." "In Christ; Alexander is not 
dead but lives beyond the stars, and his body rests 
in this tomb." Contrast these with the tone of 
heathen funereal inscriptions. In general the pagan 
epitaphs were like that which Sophocles expresses 
in the (E dip us, at Colomus: 

"Happiest beyond compare 

Never to taste of life; 

Happiest in order next, 

Being born, with quickest speed 

Thither again to turn, 

From whence we came." 
"In a Roman monument which I had occasion to 
publish not long since, a father (Caius Sextus by 
name, ) is represented bidding farewell to his daugh- 
ter, and two words — 'Vale yEternam,' farewell for- 
ever — give an expressive utterance to the feeling of 
blank and hopeless severance with which Greeks and 
Romans were burdened when the reality of death 
was before their eyes." (Mariott, p. 186.) Death 
was a cheerful event in the eyes of the early Chris- 
tians. It was called birth. Anchors, harps, palms, 
crowns, surrounded the grave. They discarded 
lamentations and extravagant grief. The prayers for 
the dead were thanksgiving for God's goodness. 
(Schaff, Hist. Christ. Church, Vol. 1, p. 342.) 
Their language is such as could not have been used 



32 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

by them had they entertained the views that pre- 
vailed from the Sixth to the Eighteenth Century, 
among the majority of Christians ; and their remains 
all testify to the cheerfulness of early Christianity. 

"The fathers of the church live in their volumi- 
nous works ; the lower orders are only represented 

by these simple records, from which, 
Cheerful Faith ..- , ' 

of the First scarcely an exception, sorrow 

Christians. an ^ complaint are banished; the 

boast of suffering, or an appeal to 
the revengeful passions is nowhere to be found. One 
expresses faith, another hope, a third charity. The 
genius of primitive Christianity — to believe, to love 
and to suffer — has never been better illustrated. 
These 'sermons in stones' are addressed to the heart 
and not to the head — to the feelings rather than to 
the taste. * * * In all the pictures and scriptures 
of our Lord's history no reference is ever found to 
his sufferings or death. No gloomy subjects occur 
in the cycle of Christian art. " (Maitland. ) Chrysos- 
tom says: "For this cause, too, the place itself is 
called a cemetery ; that you may know that the dead 
laid there are not dead, but at rest and asleep. For 
before the coming of Christ death used to be called 
death, and not only so, but Hades, but after his com- 
ing and dying for the life of the world, death came 
to be called death no longer, but sleep and repose." 
The word cemeteries, dormitories, shows us that 
death was regarded as a state of repose and thus a 
condition of hope. In fact, "in this auspicious 
word, 15 now for the first time applied to the tomb, 

15 Maitland's Church and the Catacombs. 



EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 33 

there is manifest a sense of hope and immortality, the 
result of a new religion. A star had arisen on the 
borders of the grave, dispelling the horror of dark- 
ness which had hitherto reigned there ; the prospect 
beyond was now cleared tip, and so dazzling was the 
view of an 'eternal city sculptured in the sky, ' that num- 
bers were found eager to rush through the gate of 
martyrdom, for the hope of entering its starry por- 
tals." 16 Says Ruskin: "Not a cross as a symbol in 
the Catacombs. The earliest certain Latin cross is on 
the tomb of the Empress Gall a Placidia, A. D. 451. 
No picture of the crucifixion till the Ninth Century, 
nor any portable crucifix till long after. To the early 
Christians Christ was living, the one agonized hour 
was lost in the thought of his glory and triumph. 
The fall of theology and Christian thought dates 
from the error of dwelling upon his death instead of 
his life. " 17 Farrar adds: "The symbols of the Cata- 
combs, like every other indication of early teaching, 
show the glad, bright, loving character of the Chris- 
tian faith. It was a religion of joy and not of gloom, 
of life and not of death, of tenderness not of severity. 
* * * We see in them as in the acts of the apos- 
tles, that the keynotes of the music of the Christian 
life were 'exultation' and 'simplicity.' And how 
far superior in beauty and significance were these 
early Christian symbols to the meaningless and pagan 
broken columns and broken rose-buds and skulls 
and weeping women and inverted torches of our 
cemeteries. We find in the Catacombs neither the 
cross of the fifth and sixth centuries, nor the crucifixes 

16 Maitland. 
l7 Bible of Amiens. 



34 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES 

of the twelfth, nor the torches and martyrdoms of 
the seventeenth, nor the skeletons of the fifteenth, 
nor the cypresses and death's heads of the eighteenth. 
Instead of these the symbols of beauty, hope and 
peace." 18 

From A. D. 70, the date of the fall of Jerusalem, 
to about A. D. 150, there is very little Christian lit- 

erature. It is only with Justin 
Dean Stanley's Martyr, who was executed A. D. 

Testimony. ^6^ that there is any considerable 

literature of the church. The fa- 
thers before Justin are ''shadows, formless phan- 
toms, whose writings are uncertain and only partly 
genuine." Speaking of the scarcity of literature 
pertaining to those times and the changes expe- 
rienced by Christianity, says Dean Stanley: "No 
other change equally momentous has ever since 
affected its features, yet none has ever been so silent 
and secret. The stream in that most critical mo- 
ment of its passage from the everlasting hills to the 
plain below is lost to our view at the very point 
where we are most anxious to watch it. We may 
hear its struggles under the overarching rocks; we 
may catch its spray on the boughs that overlap its 
course, but the torrent itself we see not or see only 
by imperfect glimpses. * * * A fragment here, 
an allegory there; romances of unknown authorship ; 
a handful of letters of which the genuineness of 
every portion is contested inch by inch; the sum- 
mary explanation of a Roman magistrate ; the plead- 
ings of two or three Christian apologists; customs 

18 Lives of the Fathers. 



EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 35 

and opinions in the very act of change ; last, but not 
least, the faded paintings, the broken sculptures, the 
rude epitaphs in the darkness of the Catacombs — 
these are the scanty, though attractive materials out 
of which the likeness of the early church must be 
produced, as it was working its way, in the literal 
sense of the word, underground, under camp and 
palace, under senate and forum. " 19 

There were eighty years between Paul's latest epis- 
tle and the first of the writings of the Christian fa- 
thers. Besides the writings of Tacitus and Pliny, the 
long hiatus is filled only by the emblems and in- 
scriptions of the Catacombs. What an eloquent story 
they tell of the cheerfulness of primitive Christian- 
ity! 20 

19 Christian Institutions. 

20 Martineau's Hours of Thought, p. 155. "In the cycle of Christian em- 
blems the death of Christ holds no place; it was not till six centuries after 
his death that artists began to venture upon the representation of Christ 
crucified. The crucifix dates only from the end of the Seventh Century."— 
Athanase Coquerel. 



III. 

ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

When our Lord spoke, the doctrine of unending 
torment was believed by many of those who listened 
to his words, and they stated it in terms and employed 
others, entirely different, in describing the duration 
of punishment, from the terms afterward used by 
those who taught universal salvation and annihila- 
tion, and so gave to the terms in question the sense 
of unlimited duration. 

For example, the Pharisees, according to Josephus, 
regarded the penalty of sin as torment without end, 
and they stated the doctrine in unambiguous terms. 
They called it eirgmos aidios (eternal imprisonment) 
and timorion adialeipton (endless torment), while our 
Lord called the punishment of sin aionion kolasin 
(age-long chastisement). 

Meaning of Scriptural Terms. 

The language of Josephus is used by the profane 
Greeks, but is never found in the New Testament 
connected with punishment. Josephus, writing in 
Greek to Jews, frequently employs the word that our 
Lord used to define the duration of punishment 
(aionios), but he applies it to things that had ended 
or that will end. l Can it be doubted that our Lord 



l See my " Aion- Aionios," pp. 100-14; also Josephus, "Antiq.' 
and " Jewish Wars=" 



ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 37 

placed his ban on the doctrine that the Jews had de- 
rived from the heathen by never rising their terms 
describing it, and that he taught a limited punish- 
ment by employing words to define it that only 
meant limited duration in contemporaneous litera- 
ture? Josephus used the word aionios with its cur- 
rent meaning of limited duration. He applies it to 
the imprisonment of John the Tyrant; to Herod's 
reputation; to the glory acquired by soldiers; to the 
fame of an army as a "happy life and aionian glory." 
He used the words as do the Scriptures to denote 
limited duration, but when he would describe end- 
less duration he uses different terms. Of the doc- 
trine of the Pharisees he says : 

" They believe * * * that wicked spirits are 
to be kept in an eternal imprisonment (eirgmon 
aidion). The Pharisees say all souls are incorruptible, 
but while those of good men are removed into other 
bodies those of bad men are subject to eternal pun- 
ishment" (aidios timoria). Elsewhere he says that 
the Essenes, "allot to bad souls a dark, tempestu- 
ous place, full of never-ceasing torment (timoria 
adialeiptori), where they suffer a deathless torment " 
(athanaton timorion). Aidion an6.athaitatom.re his 
favorite terms for duration, and timoria (torment) 
for punishment. 

Philo, who was contemporary with Christ, gen- 
erally used aidion to denote endless, and aionion tem- 
porary duration. He uses the exact 
Philo's Use phraseology of Matt, xxv: 46, pre- 

of the Words. cisely as Christ used it: " It is bet- 
ter not to promise than not to give 
prompt assistance, for no blame follows in the former 



38 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

case, but in the latter there is dissatisfaction from 
the weaker class, and a deep hatred and aeonian pun- 
ishment (chastisement) from such as are more pow- 
erful. " Here we have the precise terms employed 
by our Lord, which show that aionion did not mean 
endless but did mean limited duration in the time 
of Christ. Philo adopts athanaton, ateleuteton or 
aidion to denote endless, and aionion temporary du- 
ration. In one place occurs this sentence concerning 

the Wicked : tjqv airoOvrjo-KOVTa. act koX rpoirov rtva, 6a.va.rov 
aOdvarov <o7ro/x,eti/a>v koI arekevT-qrov " to live always dying, 

and to undergo, as it were, an immortal and intermin- 
able death. " 2 Stephens, in his valuable "Thesaurus, " 
quotes from a Jewish work : " These they called aionios, 
hearing that they had performed the sacred rites for 
three entire generations." 3 This shows conclusively 
that the expression "three generations" was then 
one full equivalent of aionion. Now, these eminent 
scholars were Jews who wrote in Greek, and who cer- 
tainly knew the meaning of the words they employed, 
and they give to the aeonian words the sense of in- 
definite duration, to be determined in any case by the 
scope of the subject. Had our Lord intended to in- 
culcate the doctrine of the Pharisees, he would have 
used the terms by which they described it. But his 
word defining the duration of punishment was aion- 
ion, while their words are aidion, adialeipton and 
athanaton. Instead of saying with Philo and Jo- 
seph us, thanaton athanaton, deathless or immortal 

2"De Praemiis" and " Poenis" Tom. II, pp. 19-20. Mangey's edition. 
Dollinger quoted by Beecher. Philo was learned in Greek philosophy, and 
especially reverenced Plato. His use of Greek is of the highest authority. 

8"Solom. Parab." 



ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 39 

death; eirgmon aidion, eternal imprisonment; aidion 
timorion, eternal torment ; and thanaton ateleuteton, 
interminable death, he used aionion kolasin, an ad- 
jective in universal use for limited duration, and a 
noun denoting suffering issuing in amendment. The 
word by which our Lord describes punishment is the 
word kolasin, which is thus defined: "Chastise- 
ment, punishment." " The trimming of the luxuri- 
ant branches of a tree or vine to improve it and 
make it fruitful." "The act of clipping or pruning 
— restriction, restraint, reproof, check, chastisement. " 
"The kind of punishment which tends to the im- 
provement of the criminal is what the Greek philoso- 
phers called kolasis or chastisement." "Pruning, 
checking, punishment, chastisement, correction." 
1 ' Do we want to know what was uppermost 
in the minds of those who formed the word for 
punishment? The Latin poena or punio, to pun- 
ish, the root pu in Sanscrit, which means to 
cleanse, to purify, tells us that the Latin derivation 
was originally formed, not to express mere striking 
or torture, but cleansing, correcting, delivering from 
the stain of sin. " i That it had this meaning in Greek 
usage, see Plato: "For the natural or accidental 
evils of others no one gets angry, or admonishes, 
or teaches, or punishes {kolazei) them, but we pity 
those afflicted with such misfortune * * * for if, 
O Socrates, if you will consider what is the design 
of punishing (kolazein) the wicked, this of itself will 
show you that men think virtue something that may 
be acquired ; for no one punishes {kolazei) the wicked, 

*Donnegan, Grotius, Liddell, MaxMuller, Beecher, Hist. Doc. Fut. Ret. 
pp. 73-75. 



40 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

looking to the past only simply for the wrong he has 
done — that is, no one does this thing who does not 
act like a wild beast ; desiring only revenge, without 
thought. Hence, he who seeks to punish (kolazeiri) 
with reason does not punish for the sake of the past 
wrong deed, * * * but for the sake of the future, 
that neither the man himself who is punished may 
do wrong again, nor any other who has seen him 
chastised. And he who entertains this thought must 
believe that virtue may be taught, and he punishes 
(kolazei) for the purpose of deterring from wicked- 
ness?" 5 

So of the place of punishment (Gehenna) the Jews 
at the time of Christ never understood it to denote 
endless punishment. The reader of 
Farrar's' 'Mercy and Judgment, "and 
Use of Gehenna. "Eternal Hope," and Windet's " De 
Vita functorum statu," will find any 
number of statements from the Talmudic and other 
Jewish authorities, affirming in the most explicit 
language that Gehenna was understood by the people 
to whom our Lord addressed the word as a place or 
condition of temporary duration. They employed 
such terms as these : ' ' The wicked shall be judged 
in Gehenna until the righteous say concerning them, 
'We have seen enough.' " 5 " Gehenna is nothing but 
a day in which the impious will be burned." "After 
the last judgment Gehenna exists no longer." 
1 ' There will hereafter be no Gehenna. " 6 These quo- 
tations might be multiplied indefinitely to demon- 

5 This important passage maybe found more fully quoted in "Aion- 
Aionios." 

e Targum of Jonathan on Isaiah, xvi; 24. See also " Aion— Aionios" 
and "Bible Hell." 



ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 41 

strate that the Jews to whom our Lord spoke regarded 
Gehenna as of limited duration, as did the Christian 
Fathers. Origen in his reply to Celsus (VI, xxv) 
gives an exposition of Gehenna, explaining its usage 
in his day. He says it is an analogue of the well- 
known valley of the Son of Hinnom, and signifies the 
fire of purification. Now observe : Christ carefully 
avoided the words in which his auditors expressed 
endless punishment (aidios, timoria and adialeiptos), 
and used terms they did not use with that meaning 
[aionios kolasis), and employed the term which by 
universal consent among the Jews has no such mean- 
ing {Gehenna) ; and as his immediate followers and 
the earliest of the Fathers pursued exactly the same 
course, is it not demonstrated that they intended to 
be understood as he was understood ? 7 

Professor Plumptre in a letter concerning Canon 
Farrar's sermons, says: "There were two words 
which the Evangelists might have used — kolasis, 
timoria. Of these, the first carries with it, by the 
definition of the greatest of Greek ethical writers, 
the idea of a reformatory process, (Aristotle, Rhet. 
I, x, 10-17). It is inflicted 'for the sake of him who 
suffers it. ' The second, on the other hand, describes 
a penalty purely vindictive or retributive. St. 
Matthew chose — if we believe that our Lord spoke 
Greek, he himself chose — the former word, and not 
the latter." 

All the evidence conclusively shows that the terms 
defining punishment — "everlasting," "eternal," 

7 Farrar's "Mercy and Judgment," pp. 380-381, where quotations are 
given from the Fourth Century, asserting that punishment must be limited 
because an aionion correction {aionion kolasin), as in Matt, xxv, 46, must 
be terminable. 



42 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

"Gehenna," etc. , in the Scriptures teach its limited 
duration, and were so regarded by sacred and pro- 
fane authors, and that those outside of the Bible 
who taught unending torment always employed other 
words than those used by our Lord and his disciples. 

Professor Allen concedes that the great promi- 
nence given to "hell-fire" in Christian preaching is a 
modern innovation. He says: "There is more 
'blood- theology' and 'hell-fire, ' that is, the vivid set- 
ting-forth of everlasting torment to terrify the soul, 
in one sermon of Jonathan Edwards, or one harangue 
at a modern 'revival, ' than can be found in the whole 
body of homilies and epistles through all the dark 
ages put together. * * * Set beside more mod- 
ern dispensations the Catholic position of this period 
(middle ages) is surprisingly merciful and mild." 8 
Whence Came the Doctrine ? 

When we ask the question: Where did those in 
the primitive Christian church who taught endless 
punishment find it, if not in the 
Of Heathen Bible? — we are met by these facts: — 

Origin. i. The New Testament was not in 

existence, as the canon had not been 
arranged. 2. The Old Testament did not contain 
the doctrine. 3. The Pagan and Jewish religions, 
the latter corrupted by heathen accretions, taught it 
(Hagenbach, I, First Period; Clark's Foreign 
Theol. Lib. I, new series.) Westcott tells'us: "The 
written Gospel of the first period of the apostolic age 
was the Old Testament, interpreted by the vivid 
recollection of the Savior's ministry. * * * The 

8" Christian Hist, in its Three Great Periods," pp. 257-8. 



ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 43 

knowledge of the teachings of Christ * * * to 
the close of the Second Century, were generally de- 
rived from tradition, and not from writings. The 
Old Testament was still the great store-house from 
which Christian teachers derived the sources of con- 
solation and conviction." 9 Hence the false ideas 
must have been brought by converts from Judaism 
or Paganism. The immediate followers of our 
Lord's apostles do not explicitly treat matters of 
eschatology. It was the age of apologetics and not 
of polemics. 10 The new revelation of the Divine Fa- 
therhood through the Son occupied the chief atten- 
tion of Christians, and the efforts seem to have been 
almost exclusively devoted to establish the truth of 
the Incarnation, ' 'God in Christ reconciling the world 
unto himself." We may reasonably conclude that if 
this great truth had been kept constantly in the fore- 
ground, uncorrupted by pagan error and human in- 
vention, there would have been none of those false 
conceptions of God that gave rise to the horrors of 
mediaeval times, — and no occasion in the Eighteenth 
and Nineteenth Centuries for the renascence of orig- 
inal Christianity in the form of Universalism. The 
first Christians, however, naturally brought heathen 
increments into their new faith, so that very early 
the doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked, or 
their endless torment, began to be avowed. Here 
and there these doctrines appeared from the very 
first, but the early writers generally either state the 

introduction to Gospels, p. 181. 

10 The opinions of the Jews were modified at first by the captivity in 
Egypt fifteen centuries before Christ, and later by the Babylonian captivity, 
ending four hundred years before Christ, so that many of them, the Phari- 
sees especially, no longer held the simple doctrines of Moses. 



44 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

great truths that legitimately result in universal 
good, or in unmistakable terms avow the doctrine as 
a revealed truth of the Christian Scriptures. "Num- 
bers nocked into the church who brought their 
heathen ways with them." (Third Century, "Neo- 
platonism, " by C. Bigg, D. D., London: 1895, p. 160.) 

At first Christianity was as a bit of leaven buried 
in foreign elements, modifying and being modified. 
The early Christians had individual opinions and idio- 
syncracies, which at first their new faith did not 
eradicate; they still retained some of their former 
errors. This accounts for their different views of 
the future world. At the time of our Lord's advent Ju- 
daism had been greatly corrupted. During the captiv- 
ity 11 Chaldsean, Persian and Egyptian doctrines, and 
other oriental ideas had tinged the Mosaic religion, 
and in Alexandria, especially, there was a great mix- 
ture of borrowed opinions and systems of faith, it 
being supposed that no one form alone was complete 
and sufficient, but that each system possessed a por- 
tion of the perfect truth. "The prevailing tone of 
mind was eclectic," and Christianity did not escape 
the influence. 

More than a century before the birth of Christ 12 
appeared the apocryphal Book of Enoch, which con- 
tains, so far as is known, the earliest 
The Apocryphal statement extant of the doctrine of 
Book of Enoch. endless punishment in any work of 
Jewish origin. It became very popu- 
lar during the early Christian centuries, and modi- 



"Robertson's History of the Christian Church, vol. 1, pp. 38-39. 
12 The Book of Enoch, translated from the Ethiopian, with Introduction 
and Notes. By Rev. George H. Schodde. 



ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 45 

fied, it may safely be supposed, the views of Tatian, 
Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and their followers. 
It is referred to or quoted from by Barnabas, Jus- 
tin, Clement of Alexandria, Iren^eus, Origen, Ter- 
tullian, Eusebius, Jerome, Hilary, Epiphanius, 
Augustine, and others. Jude quotes from it in verses 
14 and 15, and refers to it in verse 6, on which ac- 
count some of the fathers considered Jude apocry- 
phal; but it is probable that Jude quotes Enoch as 
Paul quotes the heathen poets, not to endorse its doc- 
trine, but to illustrate a point, as writers nowadays 
quote fables and legends. Cave, in the "Lives of 
the Fathers, " attributes the prevalence of the doctrine 
of fallen angels to a perversion of the account (Gen. 
vi: 1-4) of "the sons of God and the daughters of 
men." He refers the prevalence of the doctrine to 
* 'the authority of the 'Book of Enoch,' (highly valued 
by many in those days) wherein this story is related, 
as appears from the fragments of it still extant." 
The entire work is now accessible through modern 
discovery. 

A little later than Enoch appeared the Book of 
Ezra, advocating the same doctrine. These two 
books were popular among the Jews before the time 
of Christ, and it is supposed, as the Old Testament 
is silent on the subject, that the corrupt traditions of 
the Pharisees, of which our Lord warned his disciples 
to beware, 13 were obtained in part from these books, 
or from the Egyptian and Pagan sources whence 
they were derived. At any rate, though the Old 

13 Mark vii, 13; Matthew xvi, 6, 12; Luke xii, 1; Mark viii, 15. 



46 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Testament does not contain the doctrine, M Josephus, 
as has been seen, assures us that the Pharisees of his 
time accepted and taught it. Of course they must 
have obtained the doctrine from uninspired sources. 
As these and possibly other similar books had 
already corrupted the faith of the Jews, they seem 
later to have infused their virus into the faith of 
some of the early Christians. Nothing is better 
established in history than that the doctrine of endless 
punishment, as held by the Christian church in me- 
diaeval times, was of Egyptian origin, 15 and that for 
purposes of state it and its accessories were adopted 
by the Greeks and Romans. Montesquieu states that 
" Romulus, Tatius and Numa enslaved the gods to 
politics," and made religion for the state. 

Classic scholars know that the heathen hell was 

early copied by the Catholic church, and that almost 

its entire details afterwards entered 

into the creeds of Catholic and Pro- 
ied from Heathen .. - 

testant churches up to a century ago. 

Any reader may see this who will 

consult Pagan literature 16 and writers on the opinions 

of the ancients. And not only this, but the heathen 

writers declare that the doctrine was invented to 

awe and control the multitude. Polybius writes: 

1 ' Since the multitude is ever fickle * * * there 

is no other way to keep them in order but by fear of 

the invisible world ; on which account our ancestors 

seem to me to have acted judiciously when they 



"Milman Hist. Jews; Warburton's Divine Legation; Jahn, Archaeology. 
15 Warburton. Leland's Necessity of Divine Revelation. 
16 VirgiPs iEneid. Apollodorus, Hesiod, Herodotus, Plutarch, Diodorus 
Siculus, etc. 



ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 47 

contrived to bring into the popular belief these no- 
tions of the gods and of the infernal regions. " Sen- 
eca says: "Those things which make the infernal 
regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river 
of flaming fire, the judgment seat, etc., are all a 
fable." Livy declares that Numa invented the doc- 
trine, "a most efficacious means of governing an 
ignorant and barbarous populace." Strabo writes : 
4 * The multitude are restrained from vice by the pun- 
ishments the gods are said to inflict upon offenders, 
* * * for it is impossible to govern the crowd of 
women and all the common rabble by philosophical 
reasoning : these things the legislators used as scare- 
crows to terrify the childish multitude." Similar 
language is found in Dionysius Halicarnassus, 
Plato, and other writers. History records nothing 
more distinctly than that the Greek and Roman 
Pagans borrowed of the Egyptians, and that some of 
the early Christians unconsciously absorbed, or studi- 
ously appropriated, the doctrines of the Egyptians, 
Greeks and Romans concerning post-mortem punish- 
ment, and gradually corrupted the " simplicity that 
is in Christ" 17 by the inventions of antiquity, as from 
the same sources the Jews at the time of Christ had 
already corrupted their religion. 18 What more nat- 
ural than that the small reservoir of Christian truth 
should be contaminated by the opinions that converts 
from all these sources brought with them into their 
new religion at first, and later that the Roman Cath- 



1711 Cor. xi, 3. 

18 Milman's Gibbon, Murdock's Mosheim, Enfield's Hist. Philos., Univer- 
salis! Expositor, 1853. 



48 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

olic priests and Pagan legislators should seize them 
as engines of power by which to control the world? 
Coquerel describes the effect of the irruption 
of Pagans into the early Christian church: "The, 
at first, gradual entrance and soon rapid irruption of 
an idolatrous multitude into the bosom of Christian- 
ity was not effected without detriment to the truth. 
The Christianity of Jesus was too lofty, too pure, for 
this multitude escaped from the degrading cults of 
Olympus. The Pagans were not able to enter en 
masse into the church without bringing to it their 
habits, their tastes, and some of their ideas. " 19 Mil- 
man and Neander think 20 that old Jewish prejudices 
could not be extirpated in the proselytes of the in- 
fant church, and that latent Judaism lurked in it and 
was continued into the darker ages. Chrysostom 
complains that the Christians of his time (the Fourth 
Century) were "half Jews." Enfield 21 declares that 
converts from the schools of Pagan philosophy inter- 
wove their old errors with the simple truths of Chris- 
tianity until ' ' heathen and Christian doctrines were 
still more intimately blended * * * and both 
were almost entirely lost in the thick clouds of ignor- 
ance and barbarism which covered the earth. * * * 
The fathers of the church departed from the sim- 
plicity of the apostolic church and corrupted the 
purity of the Christian faith. " Hagenbach reminds 
us that 22 "There were two errors which the new- 
born Christianity had to guard against if it was not 



19 CoquereFs First Historical Transformations of Christianity. 
20 See Conybeare's " Paul," Vol. I, Chapters 14, 15. 

21 See also Priestley's " Corruptions of Christianity." 

22 Hist. Doct. I Sec. 22. 



ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 49 

to lose its peculiar religious features, and disappear 
in one of the already existing religions : against a re- 
lapse into Judaism on the one side, and against a mix- 
ture with Paganism and speculations borrowed from 
it, and a mythologizing tendency on the other. " The 
Sibylline Oracles, advocating universal restoration; 
Philo, who taught annihilation, and Enoch and Ezra, 
who taught endless punishment, were all read by the 
early Christians, and no doubt exerted an influence 
in forming early opinions. 

The Edinburgh Review concedes that ''upon a full 
inspection it will be seen that the corruption of 

Christianity was itself the effect of 
Early Christianity that vitiated state of the human mind, 
Adulterated. of which the vices of the government 

were the great and primary cause. " 
' ' That the Christian religion suffered much from the 
influence of the Gentile philosophy is unquestiona- 
ble. " 23 Dr. Middleton, in a famous "Letter from 
Rome, " shows that from the pantheon down heathen 
temples, shrines and altars were taken by the early 
church, and so used that Pagans could employ them 
as well as Christians, and retain their old supersti- 
tions and errors while professing Christianity. In 
other words, that much of Paganism, after the First 
Century or two, remained in and corrupted Christian- 
ity. Mosheim writes that "no one objected (in the 
Fifth Century) to Christians retaining the opinions of 
their Pagan ancestors ;" and Tytler describes the con- 
fusion that resulted from the mixture of Pagan phi- 
losophy with the plain and simple doctrines of the 

83 Vaughan's Causes of the Corruption of Christianity; also Casaubon 
and Blunt's "Vestiges." 



50 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Christian religion, from which the church in its in- 
fant state ' ' suffered in a most essential manner. " 
The Rev. T. B. Thayer, D. D., 24 thinks that the 
faith of the early Christian church ' ' of the orthodox 
party was one-half Christian, one- quarter Jewish, and 
one-quarter Pagan ; while that of the gnostic party 
was about one- quarter Christian and three-quarters 
philosophical Paganism." The purpose of many of 
the fathers seems to have been to bridge the abyss 
between Paganism and Christianity, and, for the 
sake of proselytes, to tolerate Pagan doctrine. Says 
Merivale: In the Fifth Century, " Paganism was 
assimilated, not extirpated, and Christendom has 
suffered from it more or less ever since. * * * 
The church * * * was content to make terms with 
what survived of Paganism, content to lose even more 
than it gained in an unholy alliance with superstition 
and idolatry; enticing, no doubt, many of the vul- 
gar, and some even of the more intelligent, to a nom- 
inal acceptance of the Christian faith, but conniving 
at the surrender by the great mass of its own bap- 
tized members of the highest and purest of their 
spiritual acquisitions. " 25 It is difficult to learn just how 
much surrounding influences affected ancient or 
modern Christians, for, as Schaff says (Hist. Apos. 
Ch. p. 23): "The theological views of the Greek 
Fathers were modified to a considerable extent by 
Platonism ; those of the mediaeval schoolmen, by the 
logic and dialectics of Aristotle; those of the later 
times by the system of Descartes, Spinoza, Bacon, 
Locke, I^eibnitz, Kant, Fries, Fichte, Schelling, 

2* Hist. Doct. Endless Punishment, pp. 192-193. 
» Early Church History, pp. 159-160. 



ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 51 

and Hegel. Few scientific divines can absolutely 
emancipate themselves from the influence of the phi- 
losophy and public opinion of their age, and when 
they do they have commonly their own philosophy, etc. " 
That the Old Testament does not teach even post- 
mortem punishment is universally conceded by schol- 
ars, as has been seen; and that the 
Original Greek Egyptians, and Greek and Roman 
New Testament. Pagans did, is shown already. 
That the doctrine was early in the 
Christian church, is equally evident. As the early 
Christians did not obtain it from the Old Testament, 
which does not contain it, and as it was already a 
Pagan doctrine, where could they have procured it 
except from heathen sources? And as Universalism 
was nowhere taught, and as the first Universalist 
Christians after the apostles were Greeks, perfectly 
familiar with the language of the New Testament, 
where else could they have found their faith than 
where they declare they found it, in the New Testa- 
ment? How can it be supposed that the Latins were 
correct in claiming that the Greek Scriptures teach a 
doctrine that the Greeks themselves did not find 
therein? And how can the Greek fathers in the 
primitive church mistake when they understand our 
Lord and his apostles to teach universal restoration? 
"It maybe well to note here, that after the third 
century the descent of the church into errors of doc- 
trine and practice grew more rapid. The worship 
of Jesus, of Mary, of saints, of relics, etc. , followed 
each other. Mary was called 'the Mother of God,' 
'the Queen of Heaven. ' As God began to be rep- 
resented more stern, implacable, cruel, the people 



52 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

worshiped Jesus to induce him to placate his Father's 
wrath; and then as the Son was held up as the 
severe judge of sinners and the executioner of the 
Father's vengeance, men prayed Mary to mollify the 
anger of her God-child ; and when she became un- 
feeling or lacked influence, they turned to Joseph 
and other saints, and to martyrs, to intercede with 
their cold, implacable superiors. Thus theology 
became more hard and merciless — hell was intensi- 
fied, and enlarged, and eternized — heaven shrunk, 
and receded, and lost its compassion — woman (de- 
spite the deification of Mary) was regarded as weak 
and despicable — the Agapse were abolished and the 
Eucharist deified, and its cup withheld from the peo- 
ple — and woman deemed too impure to touch it! 
As among the heathen Romans, faith and reverence 
decreased as their gods were multiplied, so here, 
as objects of worship were increased, familiarity 
bred only sensuality, and sensuous worship drove out 
virtue and veneration, until, in the language of Mrs. 
Jameson's "Legends of the Madonna," (Int. p. 
xxxi): One of the frescoes in the Vatican repre- 
sents Giulia Farnese (a noted impure woman and 
mistress of the pope !) in the character of the Ma- 
donna, and Pope Alexander VI. (the drunken, un- 
chaste, beastly !) kneeling at her feet in the charac- 
ter of a votary! Under the influence of the Medici, 
the churches of Florence were filled with pictures of 
the Virgin in which the only thing aimed at was a 
meretricious beauty. Savonarola thundered from 
his pulpit in the garden of S. Marco against these 
impieties." 26 

2« Universalist Quarterly, January, 1883. 



IV. 

DOCTRINES OF "MITIGATION" AND OF 
"RESERVE" 

There was no controversy among Christians over 
the duration of the punishment of the wicked for at 
least three hundred years after the death of Christ. 
Scriptural terms were used with their Scriptural 
meanings, and while it is not probable that univer- 
sal restoration was polemically or dogmatically an- 
nounced, it is equally probable that the endless 
duration of punishment was not taught until heathen 
corruptions had adulterated Christian truth. God's 
fatherhood and boundless love, and the work of 
Christ in man's behalf were dwelt upon, accompa- 
nied by the announcement of the fearful consequences 
of sin; but when those consequences, through Pagan 
influences, came to be regarded as endless in dura- 
tion, then the antidotal truth of universal salvation 
assumed prominence through Clement, Origen, and 
other Alexandrine fathers Even when some of the 
early Christians had so far been overcome by heathen 
error as to accept the dogma of endless torment for 
the wicked, they had no hard words for those who 
believed in universal restoration, and did not even 
controvert their views. The doctrines of Prayer 
for the Dead, and of Christ Preaching to those in 
Hades, and of Mitigation, were humane teachings of 
the primitive Christians that were subsequently dis- 
carded. 

53 



54 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

The doctrine of Mitigation was, that for some 
good deed on earth, the damned in hell would occa- 
sionally be let out on a respite or 
"Mitigation" furlough, and have surcease of tor- 

Explained, ment. This doctrine of mitigation 

was quite general among the fathers 
when they came to advocate the Pagan dogma. In 
fact, endless punishment in all its enormity, desti- 
tute of all benevolent features, was not fully de- 
veloped until Protestantism was born, and prayers 
for the dead, mitigation of the condition of the 
"lost," and other softening features were repudi- 
ated. l 

It was taught that the worst sinners — Judas him- 
self, even — had furloughs from hell for good deeds 
done on earth. Matthew Arnold embodies one of 
the legends in his poem of St. Brandon. The saint 
once met, on an iceberg on the ocean, the soul of 
Judas Iscariot, released from hell for awhile, who 
explains his respite. He had once given a cloak to a 
leper in Joppa, and so he says — 

" Once every year, when carols wake 
On earth the Christmas night's repose, 

Arising from the sinner's lake 
I journey to these healing snows. 

" I stanch with ice my burning breast, 
With silence calm my burning brain; 

O Brandon, to this hour of rest, 
That Joppan leper's ease was pain." 

It remained for Protestanism to discard all the 
softening features that Catholicism had added to the 
bequest of heathenism to Christianity, and to give 

1 Christian History in Three Great Periods, pp. 257, 8. 



DOCTRINES OF MITIGATION AND OF RESERVE. 55 

the world the unmitigated horror that Protestantism 
taught from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century. 
We cannot read the patristic literature under- 
standing^ unless we constantly bear in mind the 
early fathers' doctrine of ' ' CEcono- 
The Doctrine my," or "Reserve." 2 Plato dis- 

of "Reserve." tinctly taught it, 3 and says that error 

may be used as a medicine. He jus- 
tifies the use of the "medicinal lie." The resort of 
the early fathers to the esoteric is no doubt derived 
from Plato. Origen almost quotes him when he 
says that sometimes fictitious threats are necessary 
to secure obedience, as when Solon had purposely 
given imperfect laws. Many, in and out of the 
church, held that the wise possessor of truth might 
hold it in secret, when its impartation to the igno- 
rant would seem to be fraught with danger, and that 
error might be properly substituted. The object 
was to save " Christians of the simpler sort" from 
waters too deep for them. It is possible to defend 
the practice if it be taken to represent the method of 
a skillful teacher, who will not confuse the learner 
with principles beyond his comprehension. 4 Giese- 
ler remarks that "the Alexandrians regarded a cer- 
tain accommodation as necessary, which ventures to 
make use even of falsehood for the attainment of a 
good end; nay, which was even obliged to do so." 
Neander declares that "the Orientals, according to 
their theory of oeconomy, allowed themselves many 



2 Bigg's Platonists of Alexandria, p. 58. 

8 Grote's Plato, Vol. Ill, xxxiii, pp. 56, 7. 

4 J. H. Newman, Arians; Apologia Pro Vita Sua 



56 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

liberties not to be reconciled with the strict laws 
of veracity. " 5 

Some of the fathers who had achieved a faith in 
Universalism, were influenced by the mischievous 
notion that it was to be held esoterically, cherished in 
secret, or only communicated to the chosen few, — 
withheld from the multitude, who would not appre- 
ciate it, and even that the opposite error would, with 
some sinners, be more beneficial than the truth. 
Clement of Alexandria admits that he does not write 
or speak certain truths. O rig en claims that there 
are doctrines not to be communicated to the ignorant. 
Clement says: "They are not in reality liars who 
use circumlocution 6 <rvix7repL<j>ep6ixevoL because of the 
ceconomy of salvation. " Origen refers to truths that 
must not be written. 7 Gieseler declares that the 
Alexandrians taught that falsehood could be used to 
accomplish the good of men. Origen said that "all 
that might be said on this theme is not expedient to 
explain now, or to all. For the mass need no further 
teaching on account of those who hardly through the 
fear of seonian punishment restrain their reckless- 
ness." The reader of the patristic literature sees 
this opinion frequently, and unquestionably it caused 
many to hold out threats to the multitude in order to 
restrain them ; threats that they did not themselves 
believe would be executed. 8 



6 Allin, Univ. Asserted, shows at length the prevalence of the doctrine of 
"reserve" among the early Christians. 

6 Stromata. 

T Against Celsus I, vii; and on Romans ii. 

8 "St. Basil distinguishes in Christianity between Krjpvyfiara what is 
openly proclaimed and Boy/xara which are kept secret." Max Muller, 
Theosophy or Psychology, Lect. xiv. 



DOCTRINES OF MITIGATION AND OF RESERVE. 57 

The gross and carnal interpretation given to parts 
of the Gospel, causing some, as Origen said, to "be- 
lieve of God what would not be believed of the cruel - 
est of mankind, " caused him to dwell upon the duty 
of reserve, which he does in many of his homilies. 
He says that he can not fully express himself on the 
mystery of eternal punishment in an exoteric state- 
ment. 9 The reserve advocated and practised by 
Origen and the Alexandrians was, says Bigg, "the 
screen of an esoteric belief." Beecher reminds his 
readers that while it was common with Pagan philoso- 
phers to teach false doctrines to the masses with the 
mistaken idea that they were needful, * 'the fathers 
of the Christian church did not escape the infection 
of this leprosy of pious fraud;" and he quotes Nean- 
der to show that Chrysostom was guilty of it, and 
also Gregory Nazianzen, Athanasius, and Basil 
the Great. The prevalence of this fraus pia in the 
early centuries is well known to scholars. After 
saying that the Sibylline Oracles were probably 
forged by a gnostic, Mosheim says: "I cannot yet 
take upon me to acquit the most strictly orthodox 
from all participation in this species of criminality; 
for it appears from evidence superior to all excep- 
tion that a pernicious maxim was current, * * * 
namely, that those who made it their business to de- 
ceive with a view of promoting the cause of truth, 
were deserving rather of commendation than cen- 
sure." 

It seems to have been held that ' 'faith, the f oun- 

»Ag. Cels.; De Prin. 



58 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

dation of Chri stian knowledge, was fitted only for 
the rude mass, the animal men, who 
What Was Held were incapable of higher things, 
as to Doctrine. Far above these were the privileged 
natures, the men of intellect, or 
spiritual men, whose vocation was not to believe but 
to know." 10 

The ecclesiastical historians class as esoteric 
believers, Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzen; 
and Beecher names Athanasius and Basil the 
Great as in the same category; and Beech- 
er remarks: "We cannot fully understand such 
a proclamation of future endless punishment as 
has been described, while it was not believed, until 
we consider the influence of Plato on the age. 
* * * Socrates is introduced as saying in Grote's 
Plato: ' It is indispensable that this fiction should 
be circulated and accredited as the fundamental, con- 
secrated, unquestioned creed of the whole city, from 
which the feeling of harmony and brotherhood 
among the citizens springs. ' Such principles, as a 
leprosy, had corrupted the whole community, and 
especially the leaders. In the Roman Empire pagan 
magistrates and priests appealed to retribution in 
Tartarus, of which they had no belief, to affect the 
masses. This does not excuse, but it explains the 
preaching of eternal punishment by men who did 
not believe it. They dared not entrust the truth to 
the masses, and so held it in reserve — to deter men 
from sin. " 

General as was the confession of a belief in univer- 



10 Dean Man sell's Gnostic Heresies of the First and Second Centuries. 
Introduction, p. 10. 



DOCTRINES OF MITIGATION AND OF RESERVE. 59 

sal salvation m the church's first and best three cen- 
turies, there is ample reason to believe that it was 
the secret belief of more than gave expression to it, 
and that many a one who proclaimed a partial salva- 
tion, in his secret "heart of heart" agreed with the 
greatest of the church's fathers during the first four 
hundred years of our era, that Christ would achieve 
a universal triumph, and that God would ultimately 
reign in all hearts. 

There can be no doubt that many of the fathers 
threatened severer penalties than they believed 

would be visited on sinners, impelled 
Modern Theolo- to utter them because they consid- 
gians Equivocal. ered them to be more salutary with 

the masses than the truth itself. So 
that we may believe that some of the patristic 
writers who seem to teach endless punishment did 
not believe it. Others, we know, who accepted uni- 
versal restoration employed, for the sake of deterring 
sinners, threats that are inconsistent, literally interpre- 
ted, with that doctrine. This disposition to conceal the 
truth has actuated many a modern theologian. In Ser- 
mon XXXV, on the eternity of hell torments, Arch- 
bishop Tillotson, while he argues for the endless 
duration of punishment, suggests that the Judge has 
the right to omit inflicting it if he shall see it incon- 
sistent with righteousness or goodness to make sin- 
ners miserable forever, and Burnet urges: " What- 
ever your opinion is within yourself, and in your 
breast, concerning these punishments, whether they 
are eternal or not, yet always with the people, and 
when you preach to the people, use the received doc- 
trine and the received words in the sense in which 



60 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

the people receive them. " It is certainly allowable 
to think that many an ancient timid teacher dis- 
covered the truth without daring to entrust it to the 
mass of mankind. 

Theophilus of Alexandria proposed making Sy- 
nesius of Cyrene, bishop. The latter said : ' 'The 

philosophic intelligence, in short, 
Even Lying: while it beholds the truth, admits the 

Defended. necessity of lying. Light corresponds 

to truth, but the eye is dull of vision ; 
it can not without injury gaze on the infinite light. 
As twilight is more comfortable for the eye, so, I 
hold, is falsehood for the common run of people. The 
truth can only be harmful for those who are unable 
to gaze on the reality. If the laws of the priesthood 
permit me to hold this position, then I can accept con- 
secration, keeping my philosophy to myself at home, 
and preaching fables out of doors." 11 

"Neoplatonism.by C. Bigg, D. D. London: 1895, p. 339» 



V. 

TWO KINDRED TOPICS. 

The early Christian church almost, if not quite, 
universally believed that Christ made proclamation 

of the Gospel to the dead in Hades. 
Gospel Preached Says Huidekoper: " In the Second 
to the Dead. and Third Centuries every branch and 

division of Christians believed that 
Christ preached to the departed." 1 Dietelmaier 
declares 2 this doctrine was believed by all Christians. 
Of course, if souls were placed where their doom 
was irretrievable salvation would not be offered to 
them ; whence it follows that the early Christians be- 
lieved in post-mortem probation. Allin says that 
" some writers teach that the apostles also preached 
in Hades. Some say that the Blessed Virgin did 
the same. Some even say that Simeon went before 
Christ to Hades." All these testimonies go to 
show that the earliest of the fathers did not regard 
the grave as the dead-line which the love of God 
could not cross, but that the door of mercy is open 
hereafter as here. "The Platonic doctrine of a sep- 
arate state, where the spirits of the departed are 
purified, and on which the later doctrine of purga- 

1 An excellent resume of the opinions of the fathers on Christ's descent 
into Hades, and preaching the gospel to the dead, is Huidekoper's "The 
Belief of the First Three Centuries Concernine Christ's Mission to the Un- 
derworld;" also Huidekoper's "Indirect Testimony to the Gospels;" also 
Dean Plumptre's "Spirits in Prison." London: 1884. 

2 Historia Dogmatis de Descensu Christi ad Inferos. J. A. Dietelmaier. 

61 



62 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

tory was founded, was approved by all the expositors 
of Christianity who were of the Alexandrian school, 
as was the custom of performing religious services at 
the tombs of the dead. Nor was there much differ- 
ence between them and Tertullian in these particu- 
lars." 

In the early ages of the church great stress was 
laid on I Pet. iii. 19: ' He (Christ) went and 
preached unto the spirits in prison." That this doc- 
trine was prevalent as late as Augustine's day is evi- 
dent from the fact that the doctrine is anathematized 
in his list of heresies — number 79. And even as late 
as the Ninth Century it was condemned by Pope Bon- 
iface VI. It was believed that our Lord not only 
proclaimed his Gospel to all the dead but that he lib- 
erated them all. How could it be possible for a 
Christian to entertain the thought that all the wicked 
who died before the advent of our Lord were released 
from bondage, and that any who died after his ad- 
vent would suffer endless woe? Eusebius says: 
" Christ, caring for the salvation of all * * * 
opened a way of return to life for the dead bound in 
the chains of death." Athanasius- "The devil 
* * * cast out of Hades, sees all the fettered be- 
ings led forth by the courage of the Savior. " 3 Origen 
on I Kings, xxviii:32 : "Jesus descended into Hades, 
and the prophets before him, and they proclaim be- 
forehand the coming of Christ. " Didymus observes "In 
the liberation of all no one remains a captive ; at the 
time of the Lord's passion he alone (Satan) was in- 
jured, who lost all the captives he was keeping." 

3 De Passione et Cruce Domini. Migne, XXVIII, 186-240. 



TWO KINDRED TOPICS. 63 

Cyril of Alexandria . ' ' And wandering down even 
to Hades he has emptied the dark, secret, invisible 
treasuries." Gregory of Nazianzus: 4 " Until Christ 
loosed by his blood all who groaned tinder Tartarian 
chains." Jerome on Jonah ii: 6: " Our Lord was 
shut up in seonian bars in order that he might set 
free all who had been shut up. " 

Such passages might be multiplied, demonstrating 
that the early church regarded the conquest by Christ 
of the departed as universal. He set free from bonds 
all the dead in Hades. If the primitive Christians 
believed that all the wicked of all the aeons preceding 
the death of Christ were released, how can we suppose 
them to have regarded the wicked subsequent to his 
death as destined to suffer interminable torments? 
Clement of Alexandria is explicit in declaring that 
the Gospel was preached to all, both Jews and Gen- 
tiles, in Hades; — that "the sole cause of the Lord's 
descent to the underworld was to preach the gospel. " 
(Strom. VI.) Origen says: "Not only while Jesus 
was in the body did he win over not a few only, 
* * * but when he became a soul, without the 
covering of the body, he dwelt among those souls 
(in Hades) which were without bodily covering, con- 
verting such of them as were fit for it. " 

About a century after the death of John appeared 
the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, valuable as set- 
ting forth current eschatology. It 
The Gospel of describes the effect of Christ's preach - 

Nicodemus. ing in Hades: "When Jesus arrived 

in Hades, the gates burst open, and 
taking Adam by the hand Jesus said, ' Come all with 

♦Carm. XXXV, v. 9. 



64 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

me, as many as have died through the tree which he 
touched, for behold I raise you all up through the 
tree of the cross. ' " This book shows conclusively 
that the Christians of that date did not regard seonian 
punishment as interminable, inasmuch as those who 
had been sentenced to that condition were released. 
"If Christ preached to dead men who were once dis- 
obedient, then Scripture shows us that the moment 
of death does not necessarily involve a final and hope- 
less torment for every sinful soul. Of all the blunt 
weapons of ignorant controversy employed against 
those to whom has been revealed the possibility of a 
larger hope than is left to mankind by Augustine or 
by Calvin, the bluntest is the charge that such a 
hope renders null the necessity for the work of Christ. 

* * * We thus rescue the work of redemption from 
the appearance of having failed to achieve its end 
for the vast majority of those for whom Christ died. 

* * * In these passages, as has been truly said, 'we 
may see an expansive paraphrase and exuberant 
variation of the original Pauline theme of the univer- 
salism of the evangelic embassage of Christ, and of 
his sovereignty over the world;' and especially of the 
passage in the Philippians (ii. 9-1 1) where all they that 
are in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, 
are enumerated as classes of the subjects of the ex- 
alted Redeemer. " 5 And Alford observes : "The in- 
ference every intelligent reader will draw from the 
fact here announced: it is not purgatory; it is not 
universal restitution; but it is one which throws 
blessed light on one of the darkest enigmas of divine 

6 Farrar's "Early Days of Christianity," ch. vii. 



TWO KINDRED TOPICS. 65 

justice." Timotheus II., patriarch of the Nestorians, 
wrote that "by the prayers of the saints the souls of 
sinners may pass from Gehenna to Paradise, " (Asse- 
man. IV. p. 344). See Prof. Plumptre's "Spirits in 
Prison," p. 141; Diet. Christ. Biog. Art. Eschatol- 
ogy, etc. Says Uhlhorn (Book I, ch. iii) : "For de- 
ceased persons their relatives brought gifts on the 
anniversary of their death, a beautiful custom which 
vividly exhibited the connection between the church 
above and the church below." 

" One fact stands out very clearly from the pages t>f 
patristic literature, viz. : that all sects and divisions of 
the Christians in the second and third centuries united 
in the belief that Christ went down into Hades, or the 
Underworld, after his death on the cross, and re- 
mained there until his resurrection. Of course it 
was natural that the question should come up , What 
did he do there? As he came down from earth to 
preach the Gospel to, and save, the living, it was easy 
to infer that he went down into Hades to preach the 
same glad tidings there, and show the way of salva- 
tion to those who had died before his advent. " 6 
Prayers for the Dead. 

It need not here be claimed that the doctrine 
that Christ literally preached to the dead in Hades 
is true, or that such is the teaching of I Pet. iii : 19 
but it is perfectly apparent that if the primitive Chris- 
tians held to the doctrine they could not have be- 
lieved that the condition of the soul is fixed at death. 
That is comparatively a modern doctrine. 

There can be no doubt that the Catholic doctrine 

6 Universalist Quarterly. 



66 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

of purgatory is a corruption of the Scriptural doctrine, 
of the disciplinary character of all God's punishments. 
Purgatory was never heard of in the earlier centuries. 7 
It is first fully stated by Pope Gregory the First, 
"its inventor," at the close of the Sixth Century, 
" For some light faults we must believe that there is 
before judgment a purgatorial fire. " This theory is 
a perversion of the idea held anciently, that all God's 
punishments are purgative; what the Catholic re- 
gards as true of the errors of the good is just as true 
of the sins of the worst, — indeed, of all. The word 
rendered punishment in Matt, xxv; 46, {kolasiri) im- 
plies all this. 

That the condition of the dead was not regarded 
as unalterably fixed is evident from the fact that 

prayers for the dead were customary 
Condition of the anciently, and that, too, before the 
Dead not Final. doctrine of purgatory was formulated. 

The living believed — and so should 
we believe — that the dead have migrated to another 
country, where the good offices of survivors on earth 
avail. Perpetua begged for the help of her brother, 
child of a Pagan father, who had died unbaptized. 
In Tertullian the widow prays for the soul of her 
departed husband. Repentance by the dead is con- 
ceded by Clement, and the prayers of the good on 
earth help them. 

The dogma of the purificatory character of future 
punishment did not degenerate into the doctrine of 
punishment for believers only, until the Fourth Cen- 
tury; nor did that error crystallize into the Catholic 

7 Archs. Usher and Wake, quoted by Farrar, "Mercy and Judgment." 



TWO KINDRED TOPICS. 67 

purgatory until later. Hagenbach says: "Com- 
paring Gregory's doctrine with the earlier, and more 
spiritual notions concerning the efficacy of the purify- 
ing fire of the intermediate state, we may adopt the 
statement of Schmidt that the belief in a lasting de- 
sire of perfection, which death itself cannot quench, 
degenerated into a belief in purgatory." 

Plumptre ("Spirits in Prison," London, p. 25) has 
a valuable statement : "In every form ; from the 
solemn liturgies which embodied the belief of her 
profoundest thinkers and truest worshipers, to the 
simple words of hope and love which were traced 
over the graves of the poor, her voice (the church of 
the first ages) went up without a doubt or misgiving, 
in prayers for the souls of the departed;" showing 
that they could not have regarded their condition as 
unalterably fixed at death. Prof. Plumptre quotes 
from Lee's ' 'Christian Doctrine of Prayer for the De- 
parted," to show the early Christians' belief that inter- 
cessions for the dead would be of avail to them. 
Even Augustine accepted the doctrine. He prayed 
after his mother's death, that her sins might be for- 
given, and that his father might also receive pardon. 
("Confessions," ix, 13.) 8 

" The Platonic doctrine of a separate state where 
the spirits of the departed are purified, and on which 
the later doctrine of purgatory was founded, was ap- 
proved by all the expositors of Christianity who were 
of the Alexandrian school, as was the custom of per- 



8 That these ideas were general in the primitive church, see Nitzsch, 

"Christian Doctrine," Sec. Ill; Dorner, "System of Christian Doctrine," 

Vol. IV, (Eschatology). Also Vaughan's "Causes of the Corruption of 
Christianity," p. 319. 



68 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

forming religious services at the tombs of the dead. " 
Uhlhorn gives similar testimony: "For deceased 
persons their relatives brought gifts on the anniver- 
sary of their death, a beautiful custom, which vividly 
exhibited the connection between the church above 
and the church below." Origen's tenet of Catharsis 
or Purification was absorbed by the growing belief 
in purgatory. 9 

Important Thoughts. 
Let the reader reflect (i) that the Primitive 
Christians so distrusted the effect of the truth on the 
popular mind that they withheld it, and only cher- 
ished it esoterically, and held up terrors for effect, in 
which they had no faith; (2) that they prayed for 
the wicked dead that they might be released from 
suffering; (3) that they universally held that Christ 
preached the Gospel to sinners in Hades; (4) that the 
earliest creeds are entirely silent as to the idea that 
the wicked dead were in irretrievable and endless 
torment; (5) that the terms used by some who are 
accused of teaching endless torment were precisely 
those employed by those acknowledged to have been 
Universalists ; (6) that the first Christians were the 
happiest of people and infused a wonderful cheerful- 
ness into a world of sorrow and gloom; (7) that there 
is not a shade of darkness nor a note of despair in 
any one of the thousands of epitaphs in the Cata- 
combs; (8) that the doctrine of universal redemption 
was first made prominent by those to whom Greek 
was their native tongue, and that they declared that 
they derived it from the Greek Scriptures, while end- 

""Neoplatonism," by C. Bigg, p. 334. 



TWO KINDRED TOPICS. 69 

less punishment was first taught by Africans and 
Latins, who derived it from a foreign tongue of which 
the great teacher of it confessed he was ignorant. 
(See "Augustine " later on.) Let the reader give to 
these considerations their full and proper weight, and 
it will be impossible to believe that the fathers re- 
garded the impenitent as consigned at death to 
hopeless and endless woe. 

Note.— After giving the emphatic language of Clement and Origen and 
other ancient Christians declarative of universal holiness, Dr. Bigg, in his 
valuable book, "The Christian Platonists of Alexandria," frequently quoted 
in these pages, remarks (pp. 292-3): "Neither Clement nor Origen is, prop- 
erly speaking, a Universalist. Nor is Universalism the logical result of 
their principles." The reasons he gives are two: (1) They believed in the 
freedom of the will; and (2) they did not deny the eternity of punishment, 
because the soul that has sinned beyond a certain point can never become 
what it might haye been ! 

To which it is only necessary to say (1) that Universalists generally ac- 
cept the freedom of the will, and (2) no soul that has sinned, as all have 
sinned, can ever become what it might have been, so that Dr. Bigg's prem- 
ises would necessitate Unhersalism, but universal condemnation! 

And, as if to contradict his own words, Dr. Bigg adds in the very next 
paragraph: "The hope of a general restitution of all souls through suffering 
to purity and blessedness, lingered on in the East for some time;" and the 
last words in his book are these: "It is the teaching of St. Paul,— Then 
cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God, even 
the Father. Then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put 
all things under him, that God may be all in all." And these are the last 
words of his last note: "At the end all will be one because the Father's 
will is all in all and all in each. Each will fill the place which the mystery 
of the economy assigns to him." 

It would be interesting to learn what sort of a monstrosity Dr. Bigg has 
constructed, and labeled with the word which he declares could not be ap- 
plied to Clement and Origen. 



VI. 

THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 

As we read the writings of the immediate suc- 
cessors of the apostles, we discover that matters 

of eschatology do not occupy their 
The First Chris- thought. They dwell on the advent 
tians not Explicit of our Lord, and dilate on its blessings 
in Eschatological to the world; they give the proofs 
Matters. of his divinity, and appeal to 

men to accept his religion. Most 
of the surviving documents of the First Century 
are hortatory. It was an apologetic, not a polemic 
age. A very partisan author, anxious to show that 
the doctrine of endless punishment was bequeathed to 
their immediate successors by the apostles, concedes 
this. He says that the first Christians "touched but 
lightly and incidentally on points of doctrine, " but 
gave * ' the doctrines of Christianity in the very words 
of Scripture, giving us often no certain clew to their 
interpretations of the language. 1 " The first Chris- 
tians were converted Jews, Greeks, Egyptians, Ro- 
mans, differing in their theologies, and only agreeing 
in accepting Christ and Christianity ; their ideas of our 
Lord's teaching concerning human destiny and on 
other subjects were tinctured by their antecedent pre- 

*Dr. Alvah Hovey, State of the Impenitent Dead, pp. 131, 2. 
70 



THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 71 

dilections. Their doctrines on many points were col- 
ored by Jewish and Pagan errors, until their minds 
were clarified, when the more systematic teachers 
came, — Clement, Origen and others, who eliminated 
the errors Christian converts had brought with them 
from former associations, and presented Christianity 
as Christ taught it. The measures of meal were 
more or less impure until the leaven of genuine 
Christianity transformed them. But it is conceded 
that there is little left of the apostolic age, out of the 
New Testament, to tell us what their ideas of human 
destiny were. 

It is probable, however, that the Pharisaic notion 
of a partial resurrection and the annihilation of the 
wicked was held by some, and the heathen ideas of 
endless punishment by others. We know that even 
while the apostles lived some of the early Christians 
had accepted new, or retained ancient errors, for 
which they were reprimanded by the apostles. 
" False teachers " and "philosophy and vain deceit " 
were alleged of them, and it is the testimony of schol- 
ars that errors abounded among them, errors that 
Christianity did not at first exorcise. But the ques- 
tions concerning human destiny were not at all raised 
at first. True views and false ones undoubtedly 
prevailed, brought into the new communion from 
former associations. And it is conceded that while 
very little literature on the subject remains, there is 
enough to show that they differed, at first, and until 
wiser teachers systematized our religion, and sifted 
out the wheat from the chaff. 

The first of the apostolic fathers was Clement 
of Rome, who was bishop A. D. 85. Eusebius and 



72 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Origen thought he was Paul's fellow laborer. His 
famous (first) epistle of fifty-nine chapters is about the 
length of Mark's Gospel. He appeals 
Views of Clement to the destruction of the cities of the 
of Rome. plains to illustrate the divine punish- 

ments, but gives no hint of the idea of 
endless woe, though he devotes three chapters to the 
resurrection. He has been thought to have held to a 
partial resurrection, for he asks : " Do we then deem 
it any great and wonderful thing for the maker of all 
things to raise up again those who have proudly 
served him in the assurance of a good faith?" But 
this does not prove he held to the annihilation of the 
wicked, for Theophilus and Origen use similar 
language. He says: "Let us reflect how free from 
wrath he is towards all his creatures. " God " does 
good to all, but most abundantly to us who have fled 
for refuge to his compassions," etc. God is " the all- 
merciful and beneficent Father. " Neander affirms 
that he had the Pauline spirit," with love as the mo- 
tive, and A. St. J. Chambre, D. D., 2 thinks "he 
probably believed in the salvation of all men," and 
Allin 3 refers to Rufinus and says, "from which we 
may, I think, infer, that Clement, with other fathers, 
was a believer in the larger hope. " It cannot be said 
that he has left anything positive in relation to the 
subject, though it is probable that Chambre and 
Allin have correctly characterized him. He wrote 
a Greek epistle to the Corinthians which was lost for 
centuries, but was often quoted by subseqent writers, 
and whose contents were therefore only known in 

2 Anc. Hist. Univ., Note. 
8 Univer. Asserted, p. 105. 



THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 73 

fragments. It was probably written before John's 
Gospel. It was at length found complete, bound with 
the Alexandrian codex. It was read in church be- 
fore and at the time of Eusebius, and even as late 
as the Fifth Century. 

Polycarp was bishop of the church in Smyrna, 
A. D. 108-117. He is thought to have been John's 

disciple. Iren^eus tells us that he 
Polycarp a and Ignatius were friends of Peter 

Destructionist. and John, and related what they had 

told them. His only surviving epistle 
contains this passage : To Christ ' ' all things are 
made subject, both that are in heaven and that are 
on earth; whom every living creature shall worship; 
who shall come to judge the quick and dead; whose 
blood God shall require of them that believe not in 
him." He also says in the same chapter: " He who 
raised up Christ from the dead, will also raise us up 
if we do his will, " implying that the resurrection de- 
pended, as he thought, on conduct in this life. It 
seems probable that he was one of those who held to 
the Pharisaic doctrine of a partial resurrection. And 
yet this is only the most probable conjecture. There 
is nothing decisive in his language. When the pro- 
consul Statius Quadratus wrote to Polycarp, 
threatening him with burning, the saint replied 
1 ' Thou threatenest me with a fire that burns for an 
hour, and is presently extinct, but art ignorant, alas ! 
of the fire of aionian condemnation, and the judg- 
ment to come, reserved for the wicked in the other 
world." After Polycarp there was no literature, 
that has descended to us, for several years, except a 
few quotations in later writings, which, however, 



74 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

contain nothing- bearing on our theme, from Papias, 
Quadratus, Agrippa, Castor, etc. 

" The Martyrdom of Polycarp" purports to be a 
letter from the church of Smyrna reciting the par- 
ticulars of his death. But though it 
is the earliest of the Martyria, it is 
supposed to have a much later date 
than it alleges, and much has been 
interpolated by its transcribers. Eusebius omits 
much of it. It speaks of the fire that is " aionion 
punishment," and it is probable that the writer gave 
these terms the same sense that is given them by the 
Scriptures, Origen, Gregory and other Universalist 
writings and authors. 

Tatian states the doctrine of endless punishment 
very strongly. He was a philosophical Platonist 
more than a Christian. He was a heathen convert 
and repeats the heathen doctrines in language un- 
known to the New Testament though common 
enough in heathen works. He calls punishment 
" death through punishment in immortality," 4 terms 
used by Josephus and the Pagans, but never found in 
the New Testament. His " Diatessaron, " a collection 
of the Gospels, is of real value in determining the ex- 
istence of the Gospels in the Second Century. 

The Epistle of Barnabas was written by an Alex- 
andrian Gnostic, probably about A.D. 70 to 120, not, 
as has been claimed, by Paul's com- 
Barnabas's "Way of panion, and yet some of the best 
Death." authorities think the author of the 

Epistle was the friend of Paul. 
Though often quoted by the ancients, the first four 

4 ©avaroi/ Sia rt/xw/otas kv aBavacria* 






THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 75 

and a half chapters of the Epistle were only known 
in a Latin version until the entire Greek was discov- 
ered and published in 1863. It is the only Christian 
composition written while the New Testament was 
being written, except the " Wisdom of Solomon." 
It is of small intrinsic value, and sheds but little 
light on eschatology. The first perfect manuscript 
was found with the Sinaitic manuscript of Tischen- 
dorf, a translation of which is given by Samuel 
Sharpe. (Williams & Norgate, London, 1880. ) It 
was the first document after the New Testament to 
apply aionios to punishment; but there is nothing in 
the connection to show that it was used in any other 
than its Scriptural sense, indefinite duration. It is 
quoted by Origen in Cont. Cels., and by Clement of 
Alexandria. It is chiefly remarkable for standing 
alone among writings contemporary with the New 
Testament. The phrase, eis ton aiona, "to the age," 
mistranslated in the New Testament "forever" 
(though correctly rendered in the margin of the 
Revision), is employed by Barnabas and applied to 
the rewards of goodness and the evil consequences of 
ill doing. He says, " The way of the Black one is 
an age-lasting way of death and punishment," but 
the description accompanying shows that the Way 
and its results are confined to this life, for he pre- 
cedes it by disclaiming all questions of eschatology. 
He says: " If I should write to you about things that 
are future you would not understand. " And when 
he speaks of God he says: "He is Lord from ages 
and to ages, but he (Satan) is prince of the present 
time of wickedness. " Long duration but not strict 
eternity seems to have been in his mind when he re- 



76 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

ferred to the consequences of wickedness. This is 
confirmed by the following language ' ' He that 
chooseth those (evil) things will be destroyed to- 
gether with his works. For the sake of this there 
will be a resurrection , for the sake of this a repay- 
ment. The day is at hand in which all things will 
perish together with the evil one, The Lord is at 
hand and his reward. " Barnabas probably held the 
Scriptural view of punishment, long- lasting but 
limited, though he employs timoria (torment) instead 
of kolasis (correction) for punishment. 

In the middle of the Second Century, say A. D. 
141 to 156, a book entitled the "Shepherd," or 
" Pastor of Hermas, " was read in the 
The Shepherd or churches, and was regarded as al- 
Pastor of Hermas. most equal to the Scriptures. The 
author was commissioned to write it 
by Clemens Romanus. .Ir.en.eus, Clement of Alex- 
andria, Origen, Eusebius and Athanasius quote 
from it, and rank it among the sacred writings. 
Clement says it is "divinely expressed," and Origen 
calls it "divinely inspired." Iren^eus designates 
the book as " The Scripture." According to Rothe, 
Hefele, and the editors of Bib. Max. Patrum, Her- 
mas teaches the possibility of repentance after death, 
but seems to imply the annihilation of the wicked. 
Farrar says that the parable of the tower "certainly 
taught a possible amelioration after death : for a pos- 
sibility of repentance and so of being built into the 
tower is granted to some of the rejected stones." 
The "Pastor" does not avow Universalism, but he 
is much further from the eschatology of the church 
for the last fifteen centuries, than from universal 



THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 77 

restoration. Only fragments of this work were pre- 
served for a long time, and they were in a Latin 
translation, until 1859, when one-fourth of the orig- 
inal Greek was discovered. "This, with the frag- 
ments previously possessed, and the ^Ethiopic ver- 
sion, give us the full text of this ancient document. 
The book is a sort of Ante-Nicene Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress — an incoherent imitation of Revelation. 5 The 
theology of the " Shepherd " can be gauged from his 
language: " Put on, therefore, gladness, that hath 
always favor before God, and is acceptable unto him, 
and delight thyself in it ; for every man that is glad 
doeth the things that are good, but thinketh good 
thoughts, despising grief." How different this sen- 
timent from that which prevailed later, when saints 
mortified body and soul, and made religion the 
apotheosis of melancholy and despair. 

Of some fifteen epistles ascribed to Ignatius, it 
has been settled by modern scholarship that seven 
are genuine. There are passages in these that seem 
to indicate that he believed in the annihilation of the 
wicked. He was probably a convert from heathen- 
ism who had not gotten rid of his former opinions. 
He says : "It would have been better for them to 
love that they might rise." If he believed in a par- 
tial resurrection he could not have used words that 
denote endless consequences to sin any more than 
did Origen, for if annihilation followed those conse- 
quences, they must be limited. When Ignatius 
and Barnabas speak of "eternal" punishment or 
death, we might perhaps suppose that they regarded 

5 Bunsen, Hipp, and His Age, Vol. I, p. 182. 



78 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

the punishment of sin as endless, did we not find 
that Origen and other Universalists used the same 
terms, and did we not know that the Scriptures do 
the same, To find aionion attached to punishment 
proves nothing as to its duration. In his Epist. ad 
Trail. , he says that Christ descended into Hades and 
cleft the aionion barrier. 

It seems on the whole probable that while Igna- 
tius did not dogmatize on human destiny, he re- 
garded the resurrection as conditional. 
Ignatius Probably But here, as elsewhere, the student 
a Destructionist. should remember that the pernicious 
doctrine of " reserve" or "cecon- 
omy " continually controlled the minds of the early 
Christian teachers, so that they not only withheld 
their real views of the future, lest ignorant people 
should take advantage of God's goodness, but threat- 
ened consequences of sin to sinners, in order to sup- 
ply the inducements that they thought the masses of 
people required to deter them from sin. Dr. Ballou 
thinks that this father held that the wicked "will 
not be raised from the dead, but exist hereafter as 
incorporeal spirits. " He was martyred A. D. 107. 

Justin Martyr, A. D. 89-166, is the first scholar 
produced by the Church, and the first conspicuous 
father the authenticity of whose 
Justin Martyr's writings is not disputed. His sur- 
Views. viving works are his two Apologies, 

and his Dialogue with Trypho. It 
is difficult to ascertain his exact views. Cave says: 
"Justin Martyr maintains that the souls of good 
men are not received into heaven until the resurrec- 
tion * * * that the souls of the wicked are thrust 






THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 79 

into a worse condition, where they expect the judg- 
ment of the great day." Justin himself says that 
"the punishment is age-long chastisement {aionion 
kolasin) and not for a thousand years as Plato says," 
(in Phoedra) . ' 'It is unlimited ; men are chastised for 
an unlimited period, and the kingdom is aionion and 
the chastening fire {kolasis puros) aionion, too. * * * 
" God delays the destruction of the world, which will 
cause wicked angels and demons and men to cease 
to exist, in order to their repentance. * * * Some 
which appeared worthy of God never die, others are 
punished as long as God wills them to exist and be 
punished. * * * Souls both die and are punished. " 
He calls the fire of punishment unquenchable (asbes- 
lon). He sometimes seems to have taught a pseudo- 
Universalism, that is, the salvation of all who should 
be permitted to be immortal ; at other times endless 
punishment. Again he favors universal salvation. 
He not only condemned those who forbade the read- 
ing of the Sibylline Oracles, but commended the 
book. His language is, "We not only read them 
without fear, but offer them for inspection, knowing 
that they will appear well-pleasing to all." As the 
Oracles distinctly advocate universal salvation, it is 
not easy to believe that Justin discarded their teach- 
ings. And yet he says: "If the death of wicked 
men had ended in insensibility, " it would have been 
a "god-send" to them. Instead, he says, death is 
followed by aionion punishment. If he used the 
word as Origen did, the two statements are re- 
concilable with each other. Justin taught a 
"general and everlasting resurrection and judg- 
ment. Body and soul are to be raised and the 



80 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

wicked with the devil and his angels, and de- 
mons, sent to Gehenna. 6 * * * Christ has de- 
clared that Satan and his host, together with those 
men who follow him, shall be sent into fire, and pun- 
ished for an endless period. 7 " But it may be that he 
speaks rhetorically, and not literally. It is the gen- 
eral opinion, however, that he regarded punishment 
as limited, to be followed by annihilation. He him- 
self says: "The soul, therefore, partakes of life, be- 
cause God wills it should live; and, accordingly, it 
will not partake of life whenever God shall will that 
it should not live." And yet he says that bodies are 
consumed in the fire, and at the same time remain 
immortal. 

Justin was a heathen philosopher before his con- 
version, and his Christianity is of a mongrel type. 
He wore a pagan philosopher's robe, or pallium, after 
his conversion, calls himself a Platonist, and always 
seems half a heathen. His effort appears to be to 
fuse Christianity and Paganism, and it is not easy to 
harmonize his statements. His Pagan idiosynocra- 
sies colored his Christianity. But, as Farrar says, 
the theology of the first one or two centuries had not 
been crystallized, the ' ' language was fluid and un- 
technical, and great stress should not be laid on the 
expressions of the earliest fathers. He nowhere calls 
punishment endless, but aionion; and yet it can not 
be proved that he was at all aware of the true philo- 
sophic meaning of aionios as a word expressive of 



6 Apol. 1, 8. 

T But Gregory Nyssen ths Universalist par excellence, says that Gehenna 
is a purifying agency. So does Origen. 



THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 81 

quality, and exclusive of — or rather the absolute an- 
tithesis to — time. He says that demons and wicked 
men will be punished for a boundless age (aperanto 
aiona), but in some passages he seems to be at least 
uncertain whether God may not will that evil souls 
should cease to exist." 8 When Justin says that trans- 
gressors are to remain deathless (athanata) while de- 
voured by the worm and fire, may he not mean that 
they cannot die while thus exposed? So, too, when 
he uses the word aionios, and says the sinner must 
undergo punishment during that period, why not read 
literally "for ages, and not as Plato said, for a 
thousand years only? " 

When, therefore, these terms are found unex- 
plained, as in Justin Martyr, they should be read in 
the bright light cast upon them by the interpretations 
of Clement and O rig en, who employ them as forcibly 
as does Justin, but who explain them — "eternal 
fire " and ' ' everlasting punishment " — as in perfect 
harmony with the great fact of universal restoration. 
Doctor Farrar regards Justin Martyr as holding 
" views more or less analogous to Universalism. 9 " 

We cannot do better here than to quote H. Ballou, 
2d D. D.: 

"The question turns on the construction of a sin- 
gle passage. Justin had argued that souls are not, 
in their own nature, immortal, since they were cre- 
ated, or begotten ; and whatever thus begins to exist, 
may come to an end. ' But, still, I do not say that 
souls wholly die ; for that would truly be good f or- 



8 Lives of the Fathers, p. 112. 
9 Eternal Hope, p. 84. 



82 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

tune to the bad. What then? The souls of the pious 
dwell in a certain better place ; but those of the un- 
just and wicked, in a worse place, expecting the time 
of judgment. Thus, those who are judged of God to 
be worthy, die no more ; but the others are punished 
as long as God shall will that they should exist and 
be punished. * * * For, whatever is, or ever 
shall be, subsequent to God, has a corruptible nature, 
and is such as may be abolished and cease to exist. 
God alone is unbegotten and incorruptible, and, 
therefore, he is God ; but everything else, subse- 
quent to him, is begotten and corruptible. For this 
reason, souls both die and are punished." 10 

The Epistle to Diognetus. — This letter was long 
ascribed to Justin Martyr, but it is now generally 

regarded as anonymous. It was writ- 
Punishment ten not far from A. D. ioo, perhaps 
Not Endless. by Marcion, possibly by Justin 

Martyr. It is a beautiful composi- 
tion, full of the most apostolic spirit. It has very 
little belonging to our theme, except that at the close 
of Chapter X it speaks of " those who shall be con- 
demned to the aionion fire which shall chastise those 
who are committed to it even unto an end, " u (mechri 
telous). Even if aionion usually meant endless, it 
is limited here by the word ''unto" which has the 
force of until, as does aidios in Jude 6, — " aidios 
chains under darkness, unto (or until) the judgment 
of the great day. " Such a limited chastisement, it 
would seem, could only be believed in by one who 



wUniver. Quar., July. 1846, pp. 299, 800. 
"Migne, II, p. 1184. 






THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 83 

regarded God as Diognetus's correspondent did, as 
one who "still is, was always, and ever will be kind 
and good, and free from wrath. " 

This brief passage shows us that at the beginning 
of the Second Century Christians dwelt upon the 
severity of the penalties of sin, but supplemented 
them by restoration wherever they had occasion to 
refer to the ultimate outcome. A few years later (as 
will appear further on) when Christianity was system- 
atized by Clement and Origen, this was fully 
shown, and explains the obscurities, and sometimes 
the apparent incongruities of earlier writers. The 
lovely spirit and sublime ethics of this epistle fore- 
shadow the Christian theology so soon to be fully devel- 
oped by Clement and Origen. Bunsen thinks( Hipp, 
and His Age, I, pp. 170, 171) the letter "indisputa- 
bly, after Scripture, the finest monument we know 
of sound Christian feeling, noble courage, and manly 
eloquence. " 

Iren;eus(A. D. 120, died 202) was a friend of Igna- 
tius, and says that in his youth he saw Polycarp, 
who was contemporary with John. He had known 
several who had personally listened to the apostles. 
His principal work, "Against Heresies," was written 
A. D., 182 to 188. No complete copy of it exists in 
the original Greek: only a Latin translation is extant, 
though a part of the first book is found in Greek in 
the copious quotations from it in the writings of Hip- 
polytus and Epiphanius. Its authority is weakened 
by the wretched Latin in which most of it stands. 
One fact, however, is incontrovertible: he did not 
regard Universalism as among the heresies of his 
times, for he nowhere condemns it, though the doc- 



84 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

trine is contained in the ' ' Sibylline Oracles, " then in 
general use, and though he mentions the doctrine 
without disapproval in his description of the theology 
of the Carpocratians. 

I re n^: us has been quoted as teaching that the 
Apostles' creed was meant to inculcate endless pun- 
ishment, because in a paraphrase of 
Interesting that document he says that the Judge, 

at the final assize, will cast the wicked 
Irenseus. . ' 

into ' ' eternal fire. But the terms 

he uses are " ignem (sternum" [aionion pur.) As just 
stated, though he reprehends the Carpocratians for 
teaching the transmigration of souls, he declares with- 
out protest that they explain the text " until thou pay 
the uttermost farthing, " as inculcating the idea that 
" all souls are saved." Ir.en.eus says: " God drove 
Adam out of Paradise, and removed him far from the 
tree of life, in compassion for him, that he might not 
remain a transgressor always, and that the sin in 
which he was involved might not be immortal, nor 
be without end and incurable. He prevented further 
transgression by the interposition of death, and by 
causing sin to cease by the dissolution of the flesh 
* * * that man ceasing to live to sin, and dying 
to it, might begin to live to God. " 

Iren/eus states the creed of the church in his day, 
A. D. 1 60, as a belief in ' 'one God, the Father Almighty, 

Maker of heaven and earth, and the 
The Creed of sea, and all things that are in them ; 

Irenaeus. and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of 

God, who became incarnate for our 
salvation; and in the Holy Spirit who proclaimed 
through the prophets the dispensation of God, and 



THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 85 

the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and 
the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and 
the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved 
Christ Jesus our Lord, and his manifestation from 
heaven in the glory of the Father 'to gather all 
things in one,' (Eph. 1: 10) and to raise up anew all 
flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ 
Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Savior, and King, ac- 
cording to the will of the invisible Father, * every 
knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in 
earth, and things under the earth, and that every 
tongue should confess to him, '(Phil, ii: 10, n) and 
that he should execute just judgment towards all; 
that he may send ' spiritual wickednesses, ' (Eph. vi : 
12) and the angels who transgressed and became apos- 
tates, together with the ungodly and unrighteous, 
and wicked and profane among men, into aionion 
fire ; and may in the exercise of his grace, confer im- 
mortality upon the righteous, and holy, and those 
who have kept his commandments, and have perse- 
vered in his love, some from the beginning, and others 
from their repentance, and may surround them with 
everlasting glory. " 

The reader must not forget that the use of the 
phrase, aionion fire, does not give any color to the 
idea that Iren^eus taught endless punishment, for 
Origen, Clement, Gregory Nyssen, and other Uni- 
versalists conveyed their ideas of punishment by the 
use of the same terms, and held that salvation is be- 
yond, and even by means of the aionion fire and pun- 
ishment. 

Schaff admits that the opinions of Iren^eus are 



86 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

doubtful from his (Schaff's) orthodox standpoint and 
says : u ' * In the fourth Pf afnan frag- 
Probably a ment ascribed to him (StierenI, 889) 
Universalist. he says that ' Christ will come at the 
end of time to destroy all evil — -n-av 
to kclkov — and to reconcile all things — eis to d7roKaraA- 
Aa£ai ra -n-avra from Col. i: 20 — that there may be an 
end of all impurity. ' This passage, like I. Cor. xv: 28, 
and Col. i : 20, looks toward universal restoration rather 
than annihilation, M but good, orthodox Dr. Schaff 
admits thatit,like the Pauline passages, allows an inter- 
pretation consistent with eternal punishment. (See 
the long note in Stieren.) Dr. Beecher writes that 
Irenteus " taught a final restitution of all things to 
unity and order by the annihilation of all the finally 
impenitent. * * * The inference from this is 
plain. He did not understand aionios in the sense of 
eternal ; but in the sense claimed by Prof. Lewis, that 
is, 'pertaining to the world to come,'" not endless. 
iRENiEus thought "that man should not last forever 
as a sinner and that the sin which was in him might 
not be immortal and infinite and incurable. " 

Says Bunsen : ' ' The eternal decree of redemption, 

is, to Iren^eus, throughout, an act of God's love. 

The atonement, is, according to him, 

, ... a satisfaction paid, not to God, but 

Bunsen's View. , , -, 

to the Devil, under whose power the 

human mind and body were lying. 

But the Devil himself only serves God's purpose, for 

nothing can resist to the last, the Almighty power of 

divine love, which works not by constraint (the 

"Vol. i, p. m, 



THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 87 

Devil's way), but by persuasion.'" 13 The different 
statements of- Iren^e-us are hard to reconcile with each 
other, but a fair inference from his language seems 
to be that he hovered between the doctrines of anni- 
hilation and endless punishment, and yet leaned not 
a little hopefully to t'hat of restoration. He certainly 
says that death ends sin, which forecloses all idea of 
endless torments. It is probable that the fathers 
differed, as their successors have since differed, ac- 
cording to antecedent and surrounding influences, 
and their own idiosyncrasies. 

Of Christian writers up to date, all assert future 
punishment, seven apply the word rendered ever- 
lasting \ai&nios) to it; three, certainly did not regard 
it as endless, two holding to annihilation and one to 
universal restoration. Remembering, however, the 
doctrine of Reserve, we can by no means be certain 
that the heathen words used denoting absolute end- 
lessness were not used ' ' pedagogically, " to deter sin- 
ners from sin. 

Quadratus. — Quadratus, A. D. 131, addressed 
an Apology to the Emperor Adrian, a fragment of 
which survives, but there is no word in it relating to 
the final condition of mankind. 

The Clementine Homilies, once thought to have 
been written by Clement of Rome, but properly enti- 
tled by Baur "Pseudo Clementine," the work of 



18 Longfellow gives expression to the same thought: 
" It is Lucifer, Son of Mystery 
And since God suffers him to be, 
He, too, is God's minister 
And labors for some good 
By us not understood." 



88 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

some Gnostic Christian — teach the final triumph 
of good. One passage speaks of the 
The Clementine destruction of the wicked by the pun- 
Homilies, ishment of fire, "punished with aion- 
ion fire," but this is more than can- 
celed by other passages in which it is clearly taught 
that the Devil is but a temporal evil, a servant of 
good, and agent of God, who, with all his evil works, 
are finally to be transformed into good. On the one 
hand, the Devil is not properly an evil, but a God- 
serving being; on the other, there is a final trans- 
formation of the Devil, of the evil into good. The 
sentiments of the Homilies seem, however, somewhat 
contradictory. 

It is an important consideration not always real- 
ized, when studying the opinions that prevailed in 
the primitive church, that the earliest copies of the 
Gospels were not in existence until A. D. 60; that 
the first Epistle written by Paul — 1st Thessalo- 
nians — was not written till A. D. 52; that the 
New Testament canon was not completed until 
A. D. 170; that for a long time the only Chris- 
tian Bible was the Old Testament ; 14 that the ac- 
count of the judgment in Matt, xxv is never re- 
ferred to in the writings of the apostolic fathers, 
who probably never saw or heard of it- till towards 
the end of the Second Century; and, therefore, when 
considering the opinions of the fathers for at least a 
century and a half, we must in all cases interpret 
them by the Old Testament, which scholars of all 
churches concede does not reveal the doctrine of end- 



"Westcott Int. to Gospels, p. 181. 



THE APOSTLES* IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 89 

less woe. Probably not a single Christian writer 
heretofore quoted ever saw a copy of the Gospels. 

Athenagoras wrote an "Apology," about A. D. 
178, and a " Treatise on the Resurrection." He was 
a scholar and a philosopher, and made 
Athenagoras great efforts to convert the heathen 

and Theophilus. to Christianity. He declared that 
there shall be a judgment, the award 
of which shall be distributed according to conduct; 
but he nowhere refers to the duration of punishment. 
He was, however, the head of the Catechetical 
school in Alexandria, ^before Pant^enus, and must 
have shared the Universalist views of Pant^nus, 
Clement and Origen, his successors. 

Theophilus (A. D. 180). This author has left a 
"Treatise "-in behalf of Christianity, addressed to 
Autolycus, a learned heathen. He uses current lan- 
guage on the subject of punishment, but says: "Just 
as a vessel, which, after it has been made, has some 
flaw, is remade or remodeled, that it may become new 
and right, so it comes to man by death. For, in some 
way or other he is broken up, that he may come forth 
in the resurrection whole, I mean spotless, and right- 
eous, and immortal. " 

The preceding writers were "orthodox," but there 
were at the same time Gnostic Christians, none of 
whose writings remain except in quotations contained 
in orthodox authors, with the exception of a few frag- 
ments. They seem to have amalgamated Christian- 
ity with Orientalism. But they have been so mis- 
represented by their opponents that it is very diffi- 
cult to arrive at their real opinions on all subjects. 
Happily they speak distinctly on human destiny. 



VII. 

THREE GNOSTIC SECTS. 

Three Gnostic sects flourished nearly simultane- 
ously in the Second Century, all which accepted uni- 
versal salvation: the Basilidians, the Valentinians, 
and the Carpocratians. 

The Basilidians were followers of Basilides, who 
lived about A. D. 1 17-138. He was a Gnostic Chris- 
tian and an Egyptian philosopher. He 
wrote an alleged Gospel — exegetical 
rather than historical — no trace of 
which remains. As some of his theo- 
ries did not agree with those generally advocated 
by Christians, he and his followers were regarded 
as heretics and their writings were destroyed, 
though no evidence exists to show that their view of 
human destiny was obnoxious. Greek philosophy 
and Christian faith are mingled in the electicism of 
the Basilidians. Basilides taught that man's univer- 
sal redemption will result from the birth and death 
of Christ. According to the " Dictionary of Chris- 
tian Biography," 1 Hippolytus gives an exposition of 
this mystic Christian sect. Basilides himself was a 
sincere Christian, and "the first Gnostic teacher who 
has left an individual, personal stamp upon the age. " 2 
He accepted the entire Gospel narrative, and taught 



iVol. I, pp, 271, 2. 

8 Bunsen's Hipp, and His Age, Vol. I, p. 107. 

90 



THREE GNOSTIC SECTS. 91 

that the wicked will be condemned to migrate into 
the bodies of men or animals until purified, when they 
will be saved with all the rest of mankind. He did 
not pretend that his ideas of transmigration were ob- 
tained from the Scriptures but affirmed that he de- 
rived them from philosophy. He held that the doc- 
trines of Christianity have a two-fold character — one 
phase simple, popular, obtained from the plain read- 
ing of the New Testament; the other sublime, secret, 
mysteriously imparted to favored ones. His system 
was a sort of Egyptian metempsychosis grafted on 
Christianity, an Oriental mysticism endeavoring to 
stand on a Christian foundation, and thus solve the 
problem of human destiny. Man and nature are rep- 
resented as struggling upwards. ' ' The restoration 
of all things that in the beginning were established 
in the seed of the universe shall be restored in their 
own season." 

Iren^us charges the Basilidians with immorality, 
but Clement, who knew them better, denies it, and 
defends them 3 

The Carpocratians were followers of Carpocrates, 

a Platonic philosopher, who incorporated some of the 

elements of the Christian religion into 

his system of philosophy. The sect 

arpocra lans. fl our j s k e( j j n Egypt and vicinity early 

in the Second Century. Like the Ba- 
silidians they called themselves Gnostics, and incul- 
cated a somewhat similar set of theories. Iren^eus 
says that the Carpocratians explained the «text: 
' ' Thou shalt not go out thence until thou hast paid 

3 The standard authorities on the subject of Gnosticism are Neander, 
Baur, Matter, Bigg, Mansel (Gnostic Heresies). 



92 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

the uttermost farthing, " as teaching * ' that no one can 
escape from the power of those angels who made the 
world, but that he must pass from body to body until 
he has experience of every kind of action which can 
be practised in this world, and when nothing is want- 
ing longer to him, then his liberated soul should soar 
upwards to that God who is above the angels, the 
makers of the world. In this way all souls are saved, " 
etc. But while Iren^eus calls the Carpocratians a 
heretical sect, and denounces some of their tenets, he 
had no hard words for their doctrine of man's final 
destiny. 

The Valentinians (A. D. 130) taught that all souls 

will be finally admitted to the realms of bliss. They 

denied the resurrection of the body. 

Their doctrines were widely dissemi- 
The Valentinians. -, . A . A - . .. ~ 

nated in Asia, Africa and Europe, 

after the death of their Egyptian 
founder, Valentine. They resembled the teachings 
of Basilides in efforts to solve the problem of human 
destiny philosophically. Valentine flourished in 
Rome from A. D. 129 to 132. A devout Christian, 
and a man of the highest genius, he was never ac- 
cused of anything worse than heresy. He was "a 
pioneer in Christian theology. " His was an attempt 
to show, in dramatic form, how ' ' the work of uni- 
versal redemption is going on to the ever-increasing 
glory of the ineffable and unfathomable Father, and 
the ever-increasing blessedness of souls. " There was 
a germ of truth in the hybrid Christian theogony and 
Hellenic philosophizing that made up Valentinian- 
ism. It was a struggle after the only view of human 
destiny that can satisfy the human heart. 



THREE GNOSTIC SECTS. 93 

These three sects were bitterly opposed by the 
" orthodox " fathers in some of their tenets, but their 
Universalism was never condemned. 

It would be interesting to give an exposition of 
the Gnosticism that for some of the earlier centuries 
agitated the Christian Church ; it will 
Phases of suffice for our purpose here to say 

Gnosticism. that its manifold phases were at- 

tempts to reach satisfactory conclu- 
sions on the great subjects of man's relations to his 
Maker, to his fellow-men, to himself, and to the uni- 
verse — to solve the problems of time and eternity. 
The Gnostic philosophies in the church show the re- 
sults of blending the Oriental, the Jewish, and the 
Platonic philosophies with the new religion. * 'Gnos- 
ticism, 4 was a philosophy of religion," and Christian 
Gnosticism was an effort to explain the new revela- 
tion philosophically. But there were Gnostics and 
Gnostics. Some of the Christian Fathers used the 
term reproachfully, and others appropriated it as one 
of honor. Gnosis, knowledge, philosophy applied to 
religion, was deemed all-important by Clement, Ori- 
gen, and the most prominent of the Fathers. Mere 
Gnostics were only Pagan philosophers, but Chris- 
tian Gnostics were those who accepted Christ as the 
author of a new and divine revelation, and inter- 
preted it by those principles that had long antedated 
the religion of Jesus. 5 " The Gnostics were the first 
regular commentators on the New Testament. 
* * * The Gnostics were also the first practition- 

*Baur, Ch. Hist. First Three Cent., I, pp. 184-200. Baring Gould's 
Lost and Hostile Gospels, p. 278. 
6 Mansel, Baur, etc. 



94 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

ers of the higher criticism. * * * It (Gnos- 
ticism) may be regarded as a half-way house, 
through which many Pagans, like Ambrositis or 
St. Augustine, found their way into the church." 
(" Neoplatonism," by Rev. Dr. Charles Bigg.) The 
Valentinians, Basilidians, Carpocratians, Manichse- 
ans, Marcionites and others were Christian Gnostics ; 
but Clement, Origen and the great Alexandrians 
and their associates were Gnostic Christians. In 
fact, the Gnostic theories sought a solution of the 
problem of evil; to answer the question, " Can the 
world as we know it have been made by God?" 
" Cease," says Basilides, 6 "from idle and curious 
variety, and let us rather discuss the opinions which 
even barbarians have held on the subject of good 
and evil. * * * I will say anything rather than 
admit Providence is wicked. " Valentinus declared, 
' ' I dare not affirm that God is the author of all this. " 
Tertullian says that Marcion, like many men of 
our time, and especially the heretics, "is bewildered 
by the question of evil. " The generally accepted 
Gnostic view was that while the good would at 
death ascend to dwell with the Father, the wicked 
would pass through transformations until purified. 

Says Prof. Allen : ' ' Gnosticism is a genuine and 
legitimate outgrowth of the same general movement 
of thought that shaped the Christian dogma. Quite 
evidently it regarded itself as the true interpreter of 
the Gospel. " Baur quotes a German writer as giv- 
ing a full exposition of one of the latest attempts 
' ' to bring back Gnosticism to a greater harmony 

°Stieren's Irenaeus V, 901-3. Clem. Strom. IV, 12. 



THREE GNOSTIC SECTS. 95 

with the spirit of Christianity." Briefly, sophia (wis- 
dom), as the type of mankind, falls, rises, and is 
united to the eternal Good. Baur says that Gnos- 
ticism declares that " either through conversion and 
amendment, or through utter annihilation, evil is to 
disappear, and the final goal of the whole world- pro- 
cess is to be reached, viz., the purification of the 
universe from all that is unworthy and perverted. " 
Harnack says that Gnosticism * 'aimed at the winning 
of a world-religion. The Gnostics were the theolo- 
gians of the First Century; they were the first to 
transform Christianity into a system of doctrines 
(dogmas). They essayed * * * to conquer Chris- 
tianity for Hellenic culture and Hellenic culture 
for Christianity." 7 

Differing from the so-called " orthodox " Chris- 
tians on many points, the three great Gnostic sects 
of the Second Century were in full 

i.u t- * agreement with Clement and Ori- 
Noteworthy Facts. & , ., _ . , „ 

gen and the Alexandrine school, and 

probably with the great majority of 
Christians, in their views of human destiny. They 
taught the ultimate holiness and happiness of the 
human family, and it is noteworthy that though the 
Gnostics advocated the final salvation of all souls, 
and though the orthodox fathers savagely attacked 
them on many points, they never reckoned their Uni- 
versalism as a fault. This doctrine was not obnox- 
ious to either orthodox or heterodox in the early 
centuries. 

^Outlines oi the Hist, of Dogma, pp. 58, 9. 



VIII. 

THE SIBYLLINE ORACLES. 

The oldest Christian document since the New 
Testament, explicitly avowing the doctrine of 
universal restoration, is the "Sibylline Oracles.'' 1 
Different portions of this composition were written 
at different dates, from 181 B. C. to 267 A. D. The 
portion expressing universal salvation was written by 
an Alexandrine Christian, about A. D. 80, and the 
" Oracles " were in general circulation from A. D. 
100 onward, and are referred to with great consider- 
ation for many centuries subsequently. 

After describing the destruction of the world, 

which the Sibyl prophesies, and the consignment of 

the wicked to aionion torment, such 
The Righteous T , , , . u . , 

p , ., as our Lord teaches m Matt, xxv : 46, 

Wicked. the blessed inhabitants of heaven are 

represented as being made wretched 
by the thought of the sufferings of the lost, and as be- 
seeching God with united voice to release them. God 
accedes to their request, and delivers them from their 
torment and bestows happiness upon them. The 
"Oracles" declare: "The omnipotent, incorruptible 
God shall confer another favor on his worshipers, 
when they shall ask him. He shall save mankind 
from the pernicious fire and immortal (at/ianaton) 

^IBYAAIAKOI XPH2MOI. 

96 



THE SIBYLLINE ORACLES. 07 

agonies. * * * Having gathered them and safely 
secured them from the unwearied flame, * * * 
he shall send them, for his people's sake, into another 
and aeonian life with the immortals on the Elysian 
plain, where flow perpetually the long dark waves of 
the deep sea of Acheron. " 2 

The punishments of the wicked are here described 
in the strongest possible terms; they are " eternal," 
(awnion), " immortal" (athanaton), and yet it is de- 
clared that at the request of the righteous, God will 
deliver them from those torments. 

The Sibyl anticipates the poet Whittier: 

"Still thy love, O Christ arisen, 
Yearns to reach those souls in prison; 
Through all depths of sin and loss 
Drops the plummet of thy cross; 
Never yet abyss was found 
Deeper than that cross could sound; 
Deep below as high above 
Sweeps the circle of God's love." 

Holmes expresses the same sentiment: 

" What if (a) spirit redeemed, amid the host 

Of chanting angels, in some transient lull 

Of the eternal anthem heard the cry 

Of its lost darling. * * * 

Would it not long to leave the bliss of heaven 

Bearing a little water in its hand, 

To moisten those poor lips that plead in vain 

With him we call Our Father?" 

This famous document was quoted by Athe- 
nagoras, Theophilus, Justin Martyr, Lactantius, 
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius and Au- 
gustine. Clement calls the author "the prophet- 

«B. VIII. ii, verses 195-340 Ed. Opsopcei, Paris: 1687. . 



98 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

ess." As late as the Middle Ages the " Oracles" was 
well known, and its author was ranked with David. 
When Thomas of Celano composed the great Hymn 
of the Judgment, he said : 

"Dies Irae, dies ilia, 
Solvet saeclum in favilla, 
Teste David cum Sibylla," — 

1 ' the dreadful day of wrath shall dissolve the world 
into ashes, as David and the Sibyl testify. " 

The best scholars concede the Universalism of the 
"Oracles." Says Musardus, 3 the " Oracles" teach 
" that the damned shall be liberated after they shall 
have endured infernal punishments for many ages, 
* * * which was an error of Origen." And 
Opsopceus adds 4 " that the * Oracles ' teach that the 
wicked suffering in hell (Gehenna) after a certain 
period, and through expiations of griefs, would be 
released from punishments, which was the opinion of 
Origen," etc. Hades, and all things and persons 
are cast into unquenchable fire for purification ; that 
is, the fire is unquenchable until it has accomplished 
its purpose of purification. Gehenna itself , as Origen 
afterwards insisted, purifies and surrenders its pris- 
oners. The wicked are to suffer " immortal " ago- 
nies and then be saved. 

Dr. Westcott remarks of the "Oracles:" "They 



'Historia Deorum Fatidicorum, Vatum Sibyllorum, etc., p. 184; (1675.) 
Dicit damnatos liberandos postquam pcenas infernales per aliquot secula 
erunt perpessi, qui Origenis fuit error. 

4 Notes (p. 27) to Bib. Orac (Paris: 1607). " Impii gehennae supplicio 
addicti post certi temporis metas et peccatorum per dolores expiationem, ex 
poenis liberentur. Quae sententia fuit Origenis, etc." 



THE SIBYLLINE ORACLES. 99 

stand alone as an attempt to embrace all history, 
even in its details, in one great, theo- 
The Oracles are cratic view, and to regard the king- 
Early Christian doms Qf the worM as destined to 

Classics. r . T7 . . 

form provinces in a future Kingdom 

of God." 

While the views of retribution are not elevated, 
and represent the punishment of the wicked as in 
literal fire, and not a moral discipline, such as O ri- 
gen taught, they clearly teach universal salvation 
beyond all seonian, even athanaton suffering. A 
noted writer 5 declares : ' * The doctrine of Univer- 
salism is brought forward in more than one passage 
of this piece;" though elsewhere Dr. Deane mis- 
states, inconsistently enough, the language of the 
Sibyl, thus: " God, hearkening to the prayers of the 
saints, shall save some from the pains of hell. " He 
mistranslates anthropois into "some" instead of 
"mankind," the meaning of the word, in order to 
show that the Sibyl * ' does not, like Origen, believe 
in universal salvation. " And yet he is forced to add : 
1 1 This notion of the salvation of any is opposed to 
the sentiment elsewhere expressed * * * where 
in picturing the torments of hell the writer asserts 
that there is no place for repentance or any mercy or 
hope." But Dr. Deane forgets that the acknowl- 
edged Universalists of the early church employed 
equally strong terms concerning the duration of pun- 
ishment. The use of the terms signifying endless 
torment employed by the Sibyl, as by Origen and 
others, did not preclude the idea of the ultimate sal- 



5 William J. Deane, Pseudepigrapha, p. 329. 



ioo UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

vation of those thus punished. Origen taught that 
the most stubborn sins will be " extinguished " by 
the ' ' eternal fire, " just as the Sibyl says the wicked 
perish in "immortal" fire and are subsequently 
saved. 

In line with Deane's strange contradictions may be 
mentioned another of the many curiosities of criti- 
cism. An English prose version of 
Sir JohnFloyer's the Sibyl's Homeric hexameters was 
Blunder. made in 1713 by Sir John Floyer. 6 

He denies that the " Oracles" teach 
universal salvation at all, but in order to sustain his 
position he omits to translate one word, and mis- 
translates another! He renders the entire passage 
thus: "The Almighty and incorruptible God shall 
grant this also to the righteous when they shall pray to 
him ; that he will preserve them (literally save man- 
kind, anthropois sosai) from the pernicious fire and 
everlasting gnashing of teeth; and this will he do 
when he gathers the faithful from the eternal fire, 
placing them in another region, he shall send them 
by his own angels into another life, which will be 
eternal to them that are immortal, in the Elysian 
fields," etc. 

It is only by rendering the words denoting ' * save 
mankind," "deliver them," that he makes his point. 
A correct rendering coincides with the declarations 
of most scholars, that universal salvation is taught in 
this unique document. 

The Sibyl declares that the just and the unjust 
pass through "unquenchable fire," and that all 

6 "The Sibylline Oracles, Translated from the Best Greek Copies and 
Compared with the Sacred Prophecies." 



THE SIBYLLINE ORACLES. 101 

things, even Hades, are to be purified by the divine 
fire. And after the unjust have been released from 
Hades, they are committed to Gehenna, and then at 
the desire of the righteous, they are to be removed 
thence to "a life eternal for immortals." (B. II, 
vv: 211-250-340). 

Augustine (De Civ. Dei. B., XVIII) cited the 
famous acrostic on the Savior's name as a proof that 
the Sibyl foretold the coming of Jesus. And it is 
curious to note that in his " City of God," when stat- 
ing that certain "merciful doctors" denied the eter- 
nity of punishment, he gives the same reasons they 
assign for their belief that the Sibyl names. He 
quotes the "merciful doctors" as saying that Chris- 
tians in this world possess the disposition to forgive 
their enemies, that they will not lay aside those traits 
at death, but will pity, forgive, and pray for the 
wicked. The redeemed will unite in this prayer and 
will not God feel pity, and answer the prayer in 
which all the saved unite? Augustine presents 
these unanswerable objections, and devotes many 
pages to a very feeble reply to them. 

So fully did the Christians of the First Century 
recognize the "Oracles," and appeal to them, that 
they were frequently styled the Sibylists. Celsus 
applied the word to them, and Origen, though he ac- 
cepted the Sibyl's teachings concerning destiny, ob- 
jected that the term was not justly applied. This he 
does in " Ag. Cels." V. 61. Clement of Alexandria 
not only calls the Sibyl a prophetess, but her "Ora- 
cles " a saving hymn. 

Lactantius cited fifty passages from the Sibyl in 
his evidences of Christianity. 



102 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

No book, not even the New Testament, exerted 
a wider influence on the first centuries of the church, 
than the "Sibylline Oracles." 

Quite a literature of the subject exists in the peri- 
odical publications of the past few years, but there 
are very few references to the Universalism of the 
"Oracles. " The " Edinburgh Review" (July, 1867) 
is an exception. It states that the "Oracles" de- 
clare "the Origenist belief of a universal restoration 
(V. 33) of all men, even to the unjust, and the devils 
themselves. " The " Oracles " are specially valuable 
in showing the opinions of the first Christians after 
the apostles, and, as they aim to convert Pagans to 
Christ, and employ this doctrine as one of the weap- 
ons, it must at that time have been considered a 
prominent Christian tenet, and the candid student is 
forced to conclude that they give expression to the 
prevalent opinion of those days on the subject of 
human destiny. 

The reader must not fail to observe that the "Sib- 
ylline Oracles " explicitly state the deliverance of 
the damned from the torments of hell. They repeat- 
edly call the suffering everlasting, even "immortal," 
yet declare that it shall end in the restoration of the 
lost. 



IX. 

PANT^ENUS AND CLEMENT. 

There is nothing known to exist from the pen of 
PantjEnus, but we learn from Eusebius that this dis- 
tinguished scholar and teacher was at the head of the 
Catechetical school in Alexandria as early as A D. 179, 
having succeeded Anaxagoras. This celebrated in- 
stitution had been in existence since A. D. 100-120. 
Tradition asserts that it was founded by the apos- 
tles. 1 Jerome says, " a Marco Evangelista semper 
ecclesiastici fuere doctores." It had been up to the 
time of Pant^nus a school for proselytes, but he 
made it a theological seminary, and so was the real 
founder of the Catechetical institution. 2 

PANT^ENUswasa convert from Stoicism, and is de- 
scribed by Clement, Jerome, and others as a man of 
superior learning and abilities. Cle- 

mCV ., ' „ ment calls him "that Sicilian bee 

"Sicilian Bee. .«,..,„ 

gathering the spoil of the flowers of 

the prophetic and apostolic meadow;" "the deepest 
Gnostic," by which he means "the deepest philo- 
sophical Christian, the man who best understood and 
practised Scripture. " It could not be otherwise than 
that the teacher of Clement cherished the religious 



iRobertson Hist. Ch., Vol. I, p. 90; Bingham, Vol. Ill, x, 5; Neander 
Hist., Ch. ii, 227; Mosheim Com. I, p. 263; Butler's Lives of the Saints VII 
pp. 55-59. 

2 Similar institutions were in Antioch, Athens, Edessa, Nisibis and 
Caesarea. 

103 



104 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

views with which his great disciple was graduated, 
for of Pant^enus, Clement says: " I know what is 
the weakness of these reflections, if I compare them 
with the gifted and gracious teaching I was privileged 
to hear. " Some of his writings are alluded to, but 
though nothing remains, yet in Clement, who was 
inspired by him, he gave to the church a priceless 
legacy. 

A. D. 189 Pant,enus went on a missionary tour to 
India, and Eusebius says that while there he found 
the seeds of the Christian faith that had been sown by 
previous missionaries, and that he brought home 
with him the Gospel of Matthew, in Hebrew, that 
had been carried to India by Bartholomew. May 
it not be that some of the precepts of Buddhism re- 
sembling those of Christ, which the best Oriental 
scholars admit are of later origin than Buddha, were 
caught from the teachings of early Christian mission- 
aries? PantjEnus was martyred A. D. 216. 

The Universalism of Clement, Origen and their 
successors must, beyond question, have been taught 
by their great predecessor, Pant^enus, and there is 
every reason to believe that the Alexandrine school 
had never known any contrary teaching, from its 
foundation. 

The Alexandrine School. 

At this time Alexandria was the second city in 
the world, with a population of 600, 000 ; its great 
library contained from 400,000 to 
Alexandria and its 700,000 volumes; at one time 14,000 
Famous School. students are said to have been assem- 
bled; and it was the center of the 
world's learning, culture, thought; the seekers for 



PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 105 

truth and knowledge from all climes sought inspira- 
tion at its shrines, and it was most of all in its inter- 
est to us, not only the radiating center of Christian 
influence, but its teachers and school made universal 
salvation the theme of Christian teaching. 

1 ' To those old Christians a being who was not 
seeking after every single creature, and trying to 
raise him, could not be a being of absolute righteous- 
ness, power, love; could not be a being worthy of 
respect or admiration, even of philosophic specula- 
tion. The Alexandrian Christians expounded and 
corroborated Christianity, and adapted it to all classes 
and conditions of men, and made the best, perhaps 
the only, attempt yet made by man to proclaim a 
true world-philosophy * * * embracing the 
whole phenomena of humanity, capable of being 
understood and appreciated by every haman being 
from the highest to the lowest. " The result was, ' 'they 
were enabled to produce, in the lives of millions, 
generation after generation, a more immense moral 
improvement than the world had ever seen before. 
Their disciples did actually become righteous and 
good men, just in proportion as they were true to the 
lessons they learnt. They did for centuries work a 
distinct and palpable deliverance on the earth. " 3 

Alexandria was founded by Alexander the 
Great, 332 B. C. , and it speedily became a great city. 
After two centuries, however, it declined, until B. C. 
30 when Augustus made it an imperial city. In 196 
A. D. its municipality, which had been lost for two 
centuries, was restored; from this time on it resumed 

3 Kingsley's Alexandria and Her Schools, 



106 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

its old prosperity, which continued until internal 
dissensions weakened it, and A. D. 640, after a siege 
of fourteen months, it was taken by the Arabs under 
Amru, and among- other disasters the great library 
was destroyed. This library contained the precious 
manuscripts of Origen and multitudes of others that 
might shed great light on our theme. Abulphara- 
gius relates that John the Grammarian, a famous 
peripatetic philosopher, begged Amru to give him 
the library. Amru forwarded the request to Omar, 
who replied that if the books contained the same 
doctrines as the Koran they were not needed; if con- 
trary to it they ought not to be preserved, and they 
were therefore ordered to be burnt. Accordingly 
they were distributed among the 4, 000 public baths 
of the city, where they furnished the fuel for six 
months ! 

Alexandria continued to decline until the discovery 
of the route to the East in 1497 ruined its commerce, 
and it sank to a population of 6,000. But the open- 
ing of the Mahmoudieh canal in 1820 has increased 
its prosperity, and it is now one of the most impor- 
tant cities of the world. In 1 871 it had a population 
of 219,602. At the time of Christ, and for two hun- 
dred years after, Alexandria was at the height of its 
greatness. From the time of Ptolemy Soter (306- 
285 B. C), the books, scholars and learning of the 
world were centered in this great city. The relig- 
ions and philosophies of the world met here and cre- 
ated an intense life of thought. Jews, Christians, 
Pagans were gathered and met in intellectual con- 
flict as nowhere else. It was here that Clement, 
Origen, and their followers exerted their best influ- 



PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 107 

ence, and that Christianity preserved its purity for 
centuries. 

" The north of Africa was then crowded with 
rich and populous cities, and formed with Egypt the 
granary of the world. * * * In no part of the 
empire had Christianity taken more deep and per- 
manent root. * * * Africa, rather than Rome, 
was the parent of Latin Christianity. Tertullian 
was at this period the chief representative of African 
Christianity * * * still later Cyprian, and later 
still Augustine. To us, preoccupied with the mod- 
ern insignificance of the Egyptian town, it requires 
an effort of the mind to realize that Alexandria was 
once the second largest city in the world, and the sec- 
ond greatest patriarchate of the church, the church 
of Clement, Origen, Athanasius and Cyril. It 
gives us a kind of mental shock when we recall that 
the land of Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine is 
the modern Tunis and Algiers." 

1 'The seat and center of Christianity during the 
first three centuries was Alexandria. West of Alex- 
andria the influence of the Latins, 

Alexandria the Tertullian, Cyprian, Minucius Fe- 

Christian - . M , , 

M , j. lix and Augustine prevailed, and 

their type of Christianity was warped 
and developed by the influence of Roman law. 
Maine says that in going from East to West theo- 
logical speculation passed from Greek metaphysics 
to Roman law. The genius of Augustine, thus 
controlled, gave rise to Calvinism. The gloomy and 
precise Tertullian, the vigorous and austere 
Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, and Augustine, the 
gloomiest and most materialistic of theologians, who 



108 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

may almost be said to have invented the hell of the 
Middle Ages, contributed the forces that later adul- 
terated the genuine Christian faith. Even yet the 
Greek population of the Eastern church, who read 
the Greek Gospels as we read the English, are like 
the Greek fathers of the first ages of the church ; 
they know nothing of the doctrine invented by the 
Latin theologians. " (Stanley's Eastern Church, p. 49.) 
"In such a city as Alexandria — with its museum, 
its libraries, its lectures, its schools of philosophy, its 
splendid synagogue, its avowed atheists, its deep- 
thinking Oriental mystics — the Gospel would have 
been powerless if it had been unable to produce teach- 
ers who were capable of meeting Pagan philosophers 
and Jewish Philoists on their own ground. Such 
thinkers would refuse their attention to men who 
could not understand their reasonings, sympathize 
with their perplexities, refute their fundamental ar- 
guments, and meet them in the spirit of Christian 
courtesy. 4 Different instruments are needed for dif- 
ferent ends. Where Clement of Rome might have 
been useless, Clement of Alexandria became deeply 
influential. Where a Tertullian would only have 
aroused contempt and indignation, an Origen won 
leading Pagans to the faith of Christ. From Alex- 
andria came the refutation of Celsus; from Alexan- 
dria the defeat of Arius. It was the cradle of Chris- 
tian theology. 5 "There can be no doubt that the won- 
derful advance of Christianity among the cultivated, 
during the First and Second Centuries, was made by 

^Matter's Hist, de l'Ecole d'Alexandrie; Kingsley's Alexandria and Her 
Schools. 

5 Farrar's Lives of the Fathers, I, pp. 262, 263. 



PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 109 

the remarkable men who founded and maintained the 
Alexandrian school of Christian thought. While the 
common people heard gladly the simple story of the 
Gospel, the world's scholars were attracted and won 
by the consummate learning and genius of Clement 
and Origen, and their coadjutors." "Pagan thinkers 
would have paid attention to Clement when he spoke 
of Plato as truly noble and half- inspired ; they would 
have looked on the African father as an ignorant 
railer, who had nothing better to say of Socrates 
than that ne was ' the Attic buffoon, ' of Aristotle 
than ' miserum Aristotelem!' Such arguments as 
Tertullian's It is credible because it is absurd, it 
is certain because it is impossible, would have been 
regarded as worse than useless in reasoning with 
philosophers. " The Alexandrine Universalists met 
philosophers and scholars on their own ground and 
conquered them with their own weapons. Under 
God, the agency that gave Christianity its standing 
and wonderful progress during the first three centu- 
ries, was the Catechetical school of Alexandria, and 
the saintly scholars and Christian philosophers who 
immortalized the famous city that was the scene of 
their labors. They met and surpassed the apostles 
of culture, and proved at the very beginning that 
Christianity is no less the religion of the wise 
and learned than of the unlettered and simple. The 
Universalist Church has never sufficiently recalled 
and celebrated the great labors and marvelous suc- 
cesses of their progenitors in the primitive years of 
Christianity. 

"Those who are truly called the fathers and 



no UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

founders of the Christian church were not the simple- 
minded fishermen of Galilee, but men 
The Alexandrine who had received the highest educa- 
Teachers. tion which could be obtained at the 

time, that is Greek education. * * * 
In Alexandria, at that time the very center of the 
world, it had either to vanquish the world or to vanish. 

* * * Christianity came no doubt from the small 
room in the house of Mary, where many were gath- 
ered together praying, but as early as the Second 
Century it became a very different Christianity in the 
Catechetical school of Alexandria. * * * What 
Clement had most at heart was not the letter but the 
spirit, not the historical events, but their deeper 
meaning in universal history." 6 

Muller points out the fact that the Alexandrine 

* 'current of Christian thought was never entirely lost, 

but rose to the surface again and 
Max Muller's again at the most critical periods in 

Words. the history of the Christian religion. 

Unchecked by the Council of Nicaea, 
A. D. 325, that ancient stream of philosophical and 
religious thought flows on, and we can hear the dis- 
tant echoes of Alexandria in the writings of St. Ba- 
sil (A. D. 329-379), Gregory of Nyssa (A. D. 332- 
395), Gregory of Nazianzus (A. D. 328-389), as well 
as in the works of St. Augustine (A. D. 364-430)." 

The reader of the history of those times cannot 
help deploring the subsequent substitution of Latin 
Augustinianism and its long train of errors and evils 
for Greek Alexandrianism, nor can the Christian stu- 

6 Max Muller, Theosophy or Psychological Religion, Lecture XIII. 



PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. in 

dent avoid wishing that the Alexandrine Christians 
could have been permitted to transmit their benefi- 
cent principles uncorrupted. How different would 
have been the Middle Ages! How far beyond its 
present condition would be the Christendom of today ! 
Clement of Alexandria. 

Titus Flavius Clemens, Clemens Alexandri- 
nus, or Clement of Alexandria — born A. D. 150, 
died A. D. 220 — was reared in heathenism. Before 
his conversion to Christianity he had been thor- 
oughly educated in Hellenic literature and philoso- 
phy. It is uncertain whether he was born in Athens 
or Alexandria. He became a Christian early in his 
adult years ; was presbyter in the church in Alexan- 
dria, and in 189 he succeeded Pant^enus as president 
of the celebrated Catechetical school in Alexandria. 
During the persecution by Septimius Severus in 202 
he fled, and was in Jerusalem in 211. He never re- 
turned to Alexandria, but died about 220. This is 
all that is known of his life. 

He was the father of the Alexandrine Christian 
Philosophy, or ancient Philosophical Christianity. 
Many of his works have perished ; the principal ones 
that survive are his " Exhortation to the Heathen," 
the "Teacher," or " Pedagogue, " and "Stromata," 
or " Miscellanies," literally " Tapestries," or freely 
translated "Carpet Bag." 7 

It is the verdict of scholars that Clement's " Stro- 
mata" is the greatest of all the Christian apologies 

7 The edition of Clemens used in preparing this work is Bibliotheca 
Sacra Patrum Ecclesiae Graecorum, Pars. III. Titi Flaui Clementis Alex- 
andria Opera Omnia Tom. I, IV. Recognouit Reinholdus Klotz. Lipsise, 
Sumptibus, E. B. Schwickerti, 1, 182. Also Migne's Patrologiae. 



H2 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

except Origen's. It starts ' ' from the essential affin- 
ity between man and God, (and) goes on to show 
how, in Christianity, we have the complete restora- 
tion of the normal relation between the creature and 
the Creator." 

Th« influence of the Greek philosophers, and es- 
pecially of Plato, on the Alexandrine fathers, is con- 
ceded. 8 Clement held that the true Gnostic was the 
perfect Christian. . The Alexandrine fathers had no 
hostility to the word Gnostic, properly understood ; 
to them it signified the Christian who brings reason 
and philosophy to bear on his faith, in contradistinc- 
tion from the ignorant believer. Ir.en.eus had de- 
clared "genuine gnosis," or Gnosticism, to be "the 
doctrine of the apostles," insisting on " the plenary 
use of Scripture, admitting neither addition nor cur- 
tailment, and the reading of Scripture, and legiti- 
mate and diligent preaching, according to the word 
of God." And Justin had bequeathed to the Alex- 
andrine school the central truth that the Divine 
Word is in the germ in every human being. This 
great fact was never lost sight of, but was more and 
more developed by the three great teachers — Pan- 
t^enus, Clement and Origen. 

The materialistic philosophy of Epicureanism, 
that happiness is the highest good and can best be 
procured in a well-regulated enjoyment of the pleas- 



8 Norton's Statement of Reasons, pp, 94, 95; Cudworth; Brucker. 

The extent to which early Christians appealed to the Pagan philosophers 
may be gauged from the fact that in Origen thirty-five allusions are made to 
the Stoics, six to the Epicureans, fifteen to the Platonists, and six to the 
Pythagoreans; in Tertullian five to the Stoics and five to the Epicureans; in 
Clement of Alexandria, repeatedly. Huidekoper's Indirect Testimony to 
the Gospels. 



PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 113 

ures of life; the Pantheistic system of Stoicism, 
that one should live within himself, 
Clement's superior to the accidents of time; 

Philosophy, the logical Aristotelian! sm, and the 

Platonism that regarded the universe 
as the work of a Supreme Spirit, in which man is a 
permanent individuality possessing a spark of the 
divinity that would ultimately purify him and elevate 
him to a higher life; and that virtue would acceler- 
ate and sin retard his upward progress — these differ- 
ent systems all had their votaries, but the noblest of 
all, the Platonic, was most influential with the Alex- 
andrine fathers, though, like Clement, they exercised 
a wise and rational eclecticism, in adopting the best 
features of each .system. This Clement claimed to 
do. He says: " And by philosophy I mean not the 
Stoic, nor the Platonic, nor the Epicurean, nor that 
of Aristotle ; but whatever any of these sects had said 
that was fit and just, that taught righteousness with 
a divine and religious knowledge, this I call eclectic 
philosophy." 9 

Matters of speculation he solved by philosophy, 
but his theology he derived from the Scriptures. 
He was not, therefore, a mere philosopher, but one 
who used philosophy as a help to the interpretation 
of the religion of Christ. He says; "We wait for no 
human testimony, but bring proof of what we assert 
from the Word of the Lord, which is the most trust- 
worthy, or, rather, the only evidence." 

The thoroughly Greek mind of Clement, with his 
great imagination, vast learning and research, splen- 

9 Strom. i:7. 



H4 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

did ability, and divine spirit, could scarcely misin- 
terpret or misunderstand the New Testament Scrip- 
tures, written as they were in his mother tongue, 
and it is not difficult to believe with Bunsen, that in 
this seat and center of Christian culture and Chris- 
tian learning, he became ' ' the first Christian philoso- 
pher of the history of mankind. He believed in a 
universal plan of a divine education of the human 
race. * * * This is the grand position occupied 
by Clemens, the Alexandrian, in the history of the 
church and of mankind and the key to his doctrine 
about God and his word, Christ and his spirit, God 
and man. * * * A profound respect for the piety 
and holiness of Clemens is as universal in the an- 
cient church as for his learning and eloquence. I 
rejoice to find that Reinkins, a Roman Catholic, ex- 
presses his regret, not to say indignation, that this 
holy man and writer, the object of the unmixed ad- 
miration of the ancient Christian, should have been 
struck out of the catalogue of saints by Benedict 
XIV." 10 

When Clement, wrote Christian doctrine was 

passing from oral tradition to written definition, and 

he avers when setting forth the 

_, . . Christian religion, that he is ' 'repro- 
A Transition Period. ,. f . ' . r 

ducmg an original, unwritten tradi- 
tion," which he learned from a 
disciple of the apostles. This had been communi- 
cated by the Lord to the apostles, Peter and James 
and John and Paul, and handed down from father 
to son till, at length, Clement set forth accu- 

WHipp. and His Age, I. 



PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 115 

rately in writing, what had been before deliv- 
ered orally. We can, therefore, scarcely hope to 
find unadulterated Christianity anywhere out of the 
New Testament, if not in the writings of Clement. 
Max Muller (Theosophy or Psychological Religion, 
Preface, p. xiv) declares that Clement, having been 
born in the middle of the Second Century, may pos- 
sibly have known Papias, or some of his friends 
who knew the apostles, and therefore he was most 
competent to represent the teachings of Christ. 
Farrar writes: " There can be no doubt that 
after the date of the Clementine Recognitions, 
and unceasingly during the close of the third and 
during the fourth and following centuries, the ab- 
stract idea of endlessness was deliberately faced, and 
from imperfect acquaintance with the meaning and 
history of the word aionios it was used by many 
writers as though it were identical in meaning with 
aidios or endless." Which is to say that ignorance of 
the real meaning of the word on the part of those 
who were not familiar with Greek, subverted the 
current belief in universal restoration, cherished, as 
we shall directly show, by Clement and the Alexan- 
drine Christians. 

Passages from the works of Clement, only a few 
of which we quote, will sufficiently establish the fact 

that he taught universal restoration. 
Clement's "For all things are ordered both 

Language. universally and in particular by the 

Lord of the universe, with a view to 
the salvation of the universe. * * * But needful 
corrections, by the goodness of the great, overseeing 
judge, through the attendant angels, through various 



n6 UNIVERSALIS IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

prior judgments, through the final judgment, com- 
pel even those who have become more callous to re- 
pent," "So he saves all; but some he converts by 
penalties , others who follow him of their own will, 
and in accordance with the worthiness of his honor, 
that every knee may be bent to him of celestial, ter- 
restrial and infernal things (Phil, ii: 10), that is an- 
gels, men, and souls who before his advent migrated 
from this mortal life." "For there are partial cor- 
rections (padeiai) which are called chastisements 
(kolaseis), which many of us who have been in trans- 
gression incur by falling away from the Lord's peo- 
ple. But as children are chastised by their teacher, 
or their father, so are we by Providence. But God 
does not punish (timoriaita) , for punishment (timorid) 
is retaliation for evil. He chastises, however, for 
good to those who are chastised collectively and indi- 
vidually." 11 

This important passage is very instructive in the 
light it sheds on the usage of Greek words. The 
word from which "corrections" is rendered is the 
same as that in Hebrews xii: 9, "correction" 
' ' chastening " (paideid) ; ' * chastisement " is from 
kolasis , translated punishment in Matt, xxv : 46, 
and "punishment" is timoria, with which J osephus 
defines punishment, but a word our Lord never em- 
ploys, and which Clement declares that God never 



11 Strom, VII, ii; Pedag. I, 8; on I John ii, 2; Comments on sed etiam pro 
totomundo, etc. ("Proinde universos quidem salvat, sed alios per supplicia 
convertens, alios autem spontanea, assequentes, voluntate; et cum honoris 
dignitate (Phil, ii, 10) ut omne genu flectatur ei, caelestium, terrestrium et 
infernorum; hoc est angeli, homines, et animae quae ante adventum ejus 
de hac vita migravere temporali.") Strom. VII, 16. 



PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 117 

inflicts. This agrees with the tinif orm contention of 
Universalist scholars. 

1 ' The divine nature is not angry but is at the 
farthest from it, for it is an excellent artifice to 
frighten in order that we may not sin. * * * Noth- 
ing is hated by God." 12 So that even \iaionios meant 
endless duration, Clement would argue that it was 
used pedagogically — to restrain the sinner. It should 
be said, however, that Clement rarely uses aionion 
in connection with suffering. 

Clement insists that punishment in Hades is re- 
medial and restorative, and that punished souls are 
cleansed by fire. The fire is spiritual, purifying M the 
soul. " God v s punishments are saving and disciplinary 
(in Hades) leading to conversion, and choosing rather 
the repentance than the death of the sinner, ( Ezek. 
xviii, 23, 32; xxxiii: 11, etc.,) and especially since 
souls, although darkened by passions, when released 
from their bodies, are able to perceive more clearly 
because of their being no longer obstructed by the 
paltry flesh." 14 

He again defines the important word kolasis our 
Lord uses in Matt, xxv : 46, and shows how it differs 
from the wholly different word timoria used by Jo- 
sephus and the Greek writers who believed in irreme- 
diable suffering. He says: " He (God) chastises the 
disobedient, for chastisement [kolasis) is for the good 
and advantage of him who is punished, for it is the 
amendment of one who resists; I will not grant that 
he wishes to take vengeance. Vengeance {timoria) is a 

12 Paed I, viii. 

13 nt!/) <f>povifXOV- Strom. VII, vi. 

"VI, vi; VII, xvi; VI, xiv; VII, ii. 



Ii8 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

requital of evil sent for the interest of the avenger. He 
(God) would not desire to avenge himself on us who 
teaches us to pray for those who despitefully use us 
(Matt, v: 44). 15 * * * Therefore the good God punishes 
for these three causes : First, that he who is pun- 
ished (paidenomenos) may become better than his 
former self ; then that those who are capable of being 
saved by examples may be drawn back, being ad- 
monished; and thirdly, that he who is injured may 
not readily be despised, and be apt to receive injury. 
And there are two methods of correction, the in- 
structive and the punitive, 16 which we have called 
the disciplinary." 

The English reader of the translations of the 
Greek fathers is misled by the indiscriminate render- 
ing of different Greek words into "punish." Ti- 
moria should always be translated ' ' vengeance, " or 
"torment;" kolasis, "punishment," and paideia 
" chastisement," or "correction." 

" If in this life there are so many ways for purifi- 
cation and repentance, how much more should there 
be after death! The purification of souls, when sep- 
arated from the body, will be easier. We can set no 
limits to the agency of the Redeemer; to redeem, to 
rescue, to discipline, is his work, and so will he con- 
tinue to operate after this life. " 17 

Clement did not deem it well to express himself 
more fully and frequently respecting this point of 
doctrine, because he considered it a part of the 
Gnostic or esoteric knowledge which it might not be 



16 Poedag. I, viii. 
w Strom. IV, xxiv. 
"Quoted by Neander. 



PANT^ENUS AND CLEMENT. 119 

well for the unenlightened to hear lest it should re- 
sult in the injury of the ignorant; hence he says: 
" As to the rest I am silent and praise the Lord." 
He "fears to set down in writing what he would not 
venture to read aloud. " He thinks this knowledge 
not useful for all, and that the fear of hell may keep 
sinners from sin. And yet he can not resist declar- 
ing: "And how is he Savior and Lord and not 
Savior and Lord of all? But he (Christ) is the 
Savior of those who have believed, because of their 
wishing to know, and of those who have not believed 
he is Lord, until by being brought to confess him 
they shall receive the proper and well-adapted bless- 
ing for themselves which comes by him. " 

This extension of the day of grace through eter- 
nity is also expressed in the ' ' Exhortation to the 
Heathen " (ix) : "For great is the grace of his prom- 
ise, ' if today we hear his voice. ' And that today is 
lengthened out day by day, while it is called today. 
And to the end the today and the instruction continue ; 
and then the true today, the never ending day of 
God, extends over eternity. " His reference to the 
resurrection shows that he regarded it as deliver- 
ance from the ills of this state of being. Before the 
final state of perfection the purifying fire which 
makes wise will separate errors from the soul; the 
purgating punishment will heal and cure. 

Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem, wrote to Ori- 
gen on the death of Clement, says Eusebius, "for we 
know these blessed fathers who have gone before us 
and with whom we shall shortly be, I mean Pantae- 
nus, truly blessed and my master; and the sacred 
Clement, who was my master and profitable to me. " 



120 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

This passage would indicate the fraternity of feeling 
between these three, and seems to show that there 
was no suspicion of the heresy of the others on the 
part of Alexander. 

Clement distinctly shows that the perversion of 
the truth so long taught, that the coming of Christ 
placated the Father, had no place 
Further Words in primitive Christianity. He says: 
of Clement. God is good on his own account, 

and just also on ours, and he is just 
because he is good, * * * for before he became 
Creator he was God. He was good. And therefore 
he wished to be Creator and Father. And the 
nature of that love was the source of righteousness ; 
the cause too of his lighting up his sun, and sending 
down his own son. * * * The feeling of an- 
ger (if it is proper to call his admonition anger) is 
full of love to man, God condescending to emotion 
on man's account, etc. (Paed. I, 10. Strom. I, 27.) 

He represents that God is never angry ; he hates 
sin with unlimited hatred, but loves the sinner with 
illimitable love. His omnipotence is directed by om- 
niscience and can and will overcome all evil and 
transform it to good. His threats and punishments 
have but one purpose, and that the good of the pun- 
ished. Hereafter those who have here remained ob- 
durate will be chastened until converted. Man's 
freedom will never be lost, and ultimately it will 
be converted in the last and wickedest sinner. 

Fire is an emblem of the divine punishments 
which purify the bad. 18 ' 'Punishment is, in its opera- 

18 8ia TTU/oo? KaOapaw tojv /caKto?. 



PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 121 

tion, like medicine; it dissolves the hard heart, 
purges away the filth of uncleanness, and reduces 
the swellings of pride and haughtiness; thus restor- 
ing its subject to a sound and healthful state." 

1 ' The Lord is the propitiation, not only for our 
sins, that is of the faithful, but also for the whole 
world ( 1 John ii : 2 ) ; therefore he truly saves all, 
converting some by punishments, and others by 
gaining their free will, so that he has the high honor 
that unto him every knee should bow, angels, men 
and the souls of those who died before his advent. " 

That the foregoing passages from Clement dis- 
tinctly state the sublime sentiments we have sup- 
posed them to express, will fully appear from those 
who have made the most careful study of his opin- 
ions, and whose interpretations are unprejudiced and 
just. Says one of the most thoughtful of modern 
writers, the candid Hagenbach: 

"The works of Clement, in particular, abound 
with passages referring to the love and mercy of 
God. He loves men because they are kindred with 
God. God's love follows men, seeks them out, as 
the bird the young that has fallen from its nest. " 19 

Clement, like Tertullian, denied original de- 
pravity, and held that ' 'man now stands in the same 
relation to the tempter in which Adam stood before 
the Fall. " Clement's doctrine of the Resurrection 
was like that of Paul ; it is not a mere rising from 
death, but a standing up higher, in a greater full- 
ness of life, and a better life, as the word anastasis 
properly signifies. 

19 Christian Doct., Period I, Sec. 39. 



122 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Allen in his valuable work, "Continuity of Chris- 
tian Thought," epitomizes the teachings of Clement 
in language that describes the Uni- 

.„ , c . . versalistic contention. "The iudgf- 

Allen's Statement. . J & 

ment is not conceived as the final as- 
size of the universe in some remote 
future, but as a present, continuous element in the 
process of human education. The purpose of the 
judgment, as of all the divine penalties, is always 
remedial. Judgment enters into the work of re- 
demption as a constructive factor. God does not 
teach in order that he may finally judge, but he 
judges in order that he may teach. The censures, 
the punishments, the judgments of God are a neces- 
sary element of the educational process in the life of 
humanity, and the motive which underlies them is 
goodness and love. * * * The idea of life as an 
education under the immediate superintendence of a 
Divine instructor who is God himself indwelling in 
the world, constitutes the central truth in Clement's 
theology. * * * There is no necessity that God 
should be reconciled with humanity, for there is no 
schism in the divine nature between love and justice 
which needs to be overcome before love can go forth 
in free and full forgiveness. The idea that justice 
and love are distinct attributes of God, differing 
widely in their operation, is regarded by Clement 
as having its origin in a mistaken conception of their 
nature. Justice and love are in reality the same at- 
tribute, or, to speak from the point of view which 
distinguishes them, God is most loving when he is 
most just, and most just when he is most loving. 
* * * God works all things up to what is better. 



PANTVENUS AND CLEMENT. 123 

Clement would not tolerate the thought that any soul 
would continue forever to resist the force of redeem- 
ing love. Somehow and somewhere in the long run 
of ages, that love must prove weightier than sin and 
death, and vindicate its power in one universal tri- 
umph. " 

One of the best modern statements of the views 
of the Alexandrine fathers is given by Bigg in Chris- 
tian Platonists, pp. 75,89,112: Cle- 

^. , ment regarded the object of kolasis 
Bigg on Clement. s J 

as "threefold; amendment, example, 

and protection of the weak. Strom, 
i: 26, 168; iv:24, 154; vi:i2, 99. The distinction be- 
tween kolasis and timoria, Strom. iv:i4, 153; Paed. 
i:8, 70, the latter is the rendering of evil for evil 
and this is not the desire of God. Both kolasis and 
timoria are spoken of in Strom. v:i4, 90, but this is 
not to be pressed, for in Strom. vi:i4, 109, the distinc- 
tion between the words is dropped and both signify 
purgatorial chastisement. * * * Fear he has 
handled in the truly Christian spirit. It is not the 
fear of the slave who hates his master; it is the rever- 
ence of a child for its father, of a citizen for the good 
magistrate. Tertullian, an African and a lawyer, 
dwells with fierce satisfaction on terrible visions of 
torment The cultivated Greek shrinks not only 
from the gross materialism of such a picture, but from 
the idea of retribution which it implies. He is never 
tired of repeating that justice is but another name for 
mercy. Chastisement is not to be dreaded but to be 
embraced." * * * Here or hereafter God's desire is 
not vengeance but correction. Though Clement's 
view of man's destiny is called restorationism(<2/0/£tfto- 



124 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

tasis) it was "not as the restitution of that which was 
lost at the Fall, but as the crown and consummation 
of the destiny of man leading to a righteousness such 
as Adam never knew, and to heights of glory and 
power as yet unsealed and undreamed. * * * 
His books are in many ways the most valuable mon- 
ument of the early church ; the more precious to all 
intelligent students because he lived, not like Origen, 
in the full stream of events, but in a quiet backwater 
where primitive thoughts and habits lingered longer 
than elsewhere." " Clement had no enemies in life 
or in death. " The great effort of Clement and Ori- 
gen seems to have been to reconcile the revelation 
of God in Christ with the older revelation of God in 
nature. 

Says De Pressense: " That which strikes us in 
Clement is his serenity. We feel that he himself 
enjoys that deep and abiding peace which he urges 
the Corinthians to seek. It is impressed on every 
page he writes, while his thoughts flow on like a 
broad and quiet stream, never swelling into a full 
impetuous tide. * * * We feel that this man 
has a great love for Jesus Christ. " Compare, con- 
trast rather, his serenity and peacefulness with the 
stormy tempestuousness of Tertullian, his "narrow 
and passionate realism," and we see a demonstration 
of the power and beauty of the Restorationist 
faith. 

Frederick Denison Maurice declares: 20 "I do not 

aoLectures on theEcc. Hist, of the First and Second Centuries, pp. 230- 



PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 125 

know where we shall look for a purer or a truer man 
than this Clemens of Alexandria. 
Frederick Denison * * * He seems to me that one 
Maurice's Eulogy, of the old fathers whom we should 
all have reverenced most as a teacher, 
and loved best as a friend." 

Baur remarks; "Alexandria, the birthplace of 
Gnosticism, is also the birthplace of Christian theol- 
ogy, which in fact in its earliest forms, aimed at be- 
ing nothing but a Christian Gnosticism. Among the 
fathers, Clement of Alexandria and Origen stand 
nearest to the Gnostics. They rank gnosis (knowl- 
edge) above pistis (faith), and place the two in such 
an immanent relation to one another that neither 
can exist without the other. Thus they adopt the 
same point of view as the Gnostics. It is their aim, 
by drawing into their service all that the philosophy 
of the age could contribute, to interpret Christianity 
in its historical connection, and to take up its sub- 
ject-matter into their thinking consciousness." 21 

A candid historian observes: "Clemens may, per- 
haps, be esteemed the most profoundly learned of 
the fathers of the church. A keen desire for infor- 
mation had prompted him to explore the regions of 
universal knowledge, to dive into the mysteries of 
Paganism, and to dwell upon the abstruser doctrines 
of Holy Writ. His works are richly stored and vari- 
egated with illustrations and extracts from the poets 
and philosophers with whose sentiments he was fa- 
miliarly acquainted. He lays open the curiosities of 
history, the secrets of motley superstitions, and the 

2iChurch Hist. First Three Centuries. 



126 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

reveries of speculative wanderers, at the same time 
that he develops the cast of opinions and peculiari- 
ties of discipline which distinguished the members 
of the Christian state." M 

Daille writes: ''It is manifest throughout his 
works that Clement thought all the punishments that 
God inflicts upon men are salutary. Of this kind he 
reckons the torments which the damned in hell suf- 
fer. * * * Clemens was of the same opinion as 
his scholar Origen, who everywhere teaches that all 
the punishments of those in hell are purgatorial, 
that they are not endless, but will at length cease 
when the damned are sufficiently purified by the 
fire." 23 

Farrar gives Clement's views, and shows that 
the great Alexandrian really anticipated substan- 
tially the thought for which our church has con- 
tended for a century : 

''There are very few of the Christian fathers 
whose fundamental conceptions are better suited to 
correct the narrowness, the rigidity and the formal- 
ism of Latin theology. * * * It is his lofty and 
wholesome doctrine that man is made in the image 
of God ; that man's will is free ; that he is redeemed 
from sin by a divine education and a corrective disci- 
pline; that fear and punishment are but remedial in- 
struments in man's training; that Justice is but an- 
other aspect of perfect Love ; that the physical world 
is good and not evil ; that Christ is a Living not a 



»2Hist. Christ. Church, Second and Third Centuries, Jeremie, p, 38. 

2S Hom. VI., 4, in Exod. Qui salvus fit per ignem salvus fit, ut, si quid 
forte de specie plumbi habuerit admixtum, id ignis decoquat et resolvat, ut 
efficiantur omnes aurum purum. 



PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 127 

Dead Christ ; that all mankind form one great broth- 
erhood in him ; that salvation is an ethical process, 
not an external reward ; that the atonement was not 
the pacification of wrath, but the revelation of God's 
eternal mercy. * * * That judgment is a con- 
tinuous process, not a single sentence; that God 
works all things up to what is better ; that souls may 
be purified beyond the grave. " 

Lamson- says that Clement declares: "Punish- 
ment, as Plato taught, is remedial, and souls are ben- 
efited by it by being amended. Far from being in- 
compatible with God's goodness it is a striking proof 
of it. For punishment is for the good and benefit 
of himwho is punished. It is the bringing back to 
rectitude of that which has swerved from it." 24 

It may be stated that neither original sin, deprav- 
ity, infant guilt and damnation, election, vicarious 
atonement, and endless punishment as the penalty of 
human sin, in fact, ' 'none of the individual doctrines 
or tenets which have so long been the object of dis- 
like and animadversion to the modern theological 
mind formed any constituent part in Greek theol- 
gy " 25 They were abhorrent to Clement, Origen, 
and their associates. 

The views held by Clement and taught by his 
predecessor, Pant^enus, and, as seems apparent, 
by Anathegoras and his predecessors back to the 
apostles themselves, and by their successor Origen, 
and, as will appear on subsequent pages by others 
down to Dldymus, (A. D. 395), the last president 



2 *Church of the First Three Centuries, p. 158. 
25Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 19. 



128 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

of the greatest theological school of the Second and 
Third Centuries, were substantially those taught by 
the Universalist church of today, so far as they in- 
cluded the character of God, the nature and final 
destiny of mankind, the effect of the resurrection, 
the judgment, the nature and end of punishment, 
and other cognate themes. In fact Clement stands 
on the subject of God's purpose and plan, and man's 
ultimate destiny, as substantially a representative of 
the Universalist church of the Nineteenth Century, 
as well as a type of ancient scholarship. 



X. 

ORIGEN. 

Origen Adamantius was born of Christian pa- 
rents, in Alexandria, A. D. 185. He was early 
taught the Christian religion, and when a mere boy 
could recite long passages of Scripture from memory. 
During the persecution by Septimus Severus, A. D. 
202, his father, Leonides, was imprisoned, and the 
son wrote to him not to deny Christ out of tenderness 
for his family, and was only prevented from surren- 
dering himself to voluntary martyrdom by his mother, 
who secreted his clothes. Leonides died a martyr. 
In the year 203, then but eighteen years of age, Ori- 
gen was appointed to the presidency of the theolog- 
ical school in Alexandria, a position left vacant by 
the flight of Clement from heathen persecution. He 
made himself proficient in the various branches of 
learning, traveled in the Orient and acquired the He- 
brew language for the purpose of translating the 
Scriptures. His fame extended in all directions. 
He won eminent heathens to Christianity, and his in- 
structions were sought by people of all lands. He 
renounced all but the barest necessities of life, rarely 
eating flesh, never drinking wine, slept on the naked 
floor, and devoted the greater part of the night to 
prayer and study. Eusebius says that he would not 
live upon the bounty of those who would have been 
glad to maintain him while he was at work for the 



129 



130 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

world's good, and so he disposed of his valuable 
library to one who would allow him the daily pittance 
of fourobols; and rigidly acted on our Lord's pre- 
cept not to have ' ' two coats, or wear . shoes, and to 
have no anxiety for the morrow." 1 Origen is even 
said to have mutilated himself (though this is dis- 
puted) from an erroneous construction of the Savior's 
command (Matt, xix; 12), and to guard himself from 
calumny that might proceed from his association 
with female catechumens. This act he lamented in 
later years. If done it was from the purest motives, 
and was an act of great self-sacrifice, for, as it was 
forbidden by canonical law, it debarred him from 

clerical promotion. He was ordained 
Early Opposition presbyter A. D. 228, by two bishops 
to Origen. outside his diocese, and this irregular 

act performed by others than his own 
diocesan gave grounds to Demetrius of Alexandria, 
in whose jurisdiction he lived, to manifest the envy 
he had already felt at the growing reputation of the 
young scholar; and in two councils composed and 
controlled by Demetrius, A. D. 231 and 232, Origen 
was deposed. 2 Many of the church authorities con- 
demned the action. In this persecution Origen proved 

lEusebius Eccl. Hist. VI. Butler's Lives of the Saints, Vol. IV, pp. 224- 
231, contains quite a full sketch of Origen's life, though as he was not can- 
onized he is only embalmed in a foot note. 

'Demetrius is entitled to a paragraph in order to show the kind of men 
who sometimes controlled the scholarship and opinions of the period. When 
the patriarch Julian was dying he dreamed that his successor would come 
next day, and bring him a bunch of grapes. Next day this Demetrius 
came with his bunch of grapes, an ignorant rustic, and he was 
soon after seated in the episcopal chair. It was this ignoramus who tyran- 
nically assumed control of ecclesiastical affairs, censured Origen, and com- 
pelled bishops of his own appointing to pass a sentence of degradation on 
Origen, which the legitimate presbyters had refused. 



ORIGEN. 131 

himself as grand in spirit as in mind. To his friends 
he said : * ' We must pity them rather than hate them 
(his enemies), pray for them rather than curse them, 
for we were made for blessing, not for cursing." Ori- 
gen went to Palestine A. D. 230, opened a school in 
Caesarea, and enjoyed a continually increasing fame. 
The persecutions under Maximinus in 235, drove him 
away. He went to Cappadocia, then to Greece, and 
finally back to Palestine. Defamed at home he was 
honored abroad, but was at length called back to 
Alexandria, where his pupil Dion ysius had succeeded 
Demetrius as bishop. But soon after, during the 
persecution under Decius, he was tortured and con- 
demned to die at the stake, but he lingered, and at 
length died of his injuries and sufferings, a true mar- 
tyr, in Tyre, A. D. 253 or 254, at the age of sixty- 
nine. His grave was known down to the Middle Ages. 
The historian Schaff declares: " It is impossible 
to deny a respectful sympathy to this extraordinary 

man, who, with all his brilliant tal- 
Professor Schaff ents, and a host of enthusiastic 
on Origen. friends and admirers, was driven 

from his country, stripped of his sa- 
cred office, excommunicated from a part of the 
church, then thrown into a dungeon, loaded with 
chains, racked by torture, doomed to drag his aged 
frame and dislocated limbs in pain and poverty, and 
long after his death to have his memory branded, his 
name anathematized, and his salvation denied; but 
who, nevertheless, did more than all his enemies 
combined to advance the cause of sacred learning, to 
refute and convert heathens and heretics, and to 
make the church respected in the eyes of the world 



132 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

* * * Origen was the greatest scholar of his age, 
and the most learned and genial of all the ante- 
Nicene fathers. Even heathens and heretics ad- 
mired or feared his brilliant talents. His knowledge 
embraced all departments of the philology, philoso- 
phy and theology of his day. With this he united 
profound and fertile thought, keen penetration, and 
glowing imagination. As a true divine he conse- 
crated all his studies by prayer, and turned them, ac- 
cording to his best convictions, to the service of truth 
and piety." 3 

While chained in prison, his feet in the stocks, his 
constant theme was: " I can do all things through 
Christ who strengtheneth me. " His last thought was 
for his brethren. " He has left the memory of one of 
the greatest theologians and greatest saints the church 
has ever possessed. One of his own words strikes 
the key-note of his life : c Love, ' he says again and 
again, c is an agony, a passion ; ' ' Caritas est pas- 
sio. ' To love the truth so as to suffer for it in the 
world and in the church ; to love mankind with a ten- 
der sympathy ; to extend the arms of compassion ever 
more widely, so as to over-pass all barriers of dog- 
matic difference under the far-reaching impulse of 
this pitying love ; to realize that the essence of love 
is sacrifice, and to make self the unreserved and will- 
ing victim, such was the creed, such was the life of 
Origen." 4 

He described in letters now lost, the sufferings he 
endured without the martyrdom he so longed for, 
and yet in terms of patience and Christian forgive- 

3Hist. Christ. Church, I, pp. 54, 55. 

4 De Pressense Martyrs and Apologists II, p. 340. 



ORIGEN. 133 

ness. Persecuted by Pagans for his Christian fidelity, 
and by Christians for heresy, driven from home and 
country, and after his death his morals questioned, 
his memory branded, his name anathematized, and 
even his salvation denied, 5 there is not a character 
in the annals of Christendom more unjustly treated. 

Eusebius relates how Origen bore in his old age, 
as in his youth, fearful sufferings for his fidelity to 
his Master, and carried the scars of persecution into 
his grave. No nobler witness to the truth is found 
in the records of Christian fidelity. And, as though 
the terrible persecutions he suffered during life were 
not enough, he has for fifteen hundred years borne 
obloquy, reproach, and denunciation from professing 
Christians who were unworthy to loosen his shoe 
latchets. Most of those who decried him during his 
lifetime, and for a century after, were men whose 
characters were of an inferior, and some of a very 
low order; but the candid Nicephorus, a hundred 
and fifty years after his death, wrote that he was 
"held in great glory in all the world. " 

This greatest of all Christian apologists and exe- 
getes, and the first man in Christendom since Paul, 
was a distinctive Universalist. He could not have 
misunderstood or misrepresented the teachings of 
his Master. The language of the New Testament 
was his mother tongue. He derived the teachings 
of Christ from Christ himself in a direct line through 
his teacher Clement ; and he placed the defense of 
Christianity on Universalistic grounds. When Cel- 
sus, in his ' 'True Discourse, " the first great assault on 
Christianity, objected to Christianity on the ground 

5 Bayle, Diet. Hist. Art. Origene. 



134 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

that it taught punishment by fire, O rig en replied 
that the threatened fire possessed a disciplinary, puri- 
fying quality that will consume in the sinner what- 
ever evil material it can find to consume. 

O rig en declares that Gehenna is an analogue of 
the Valley of Hinnom and connotates a purifying 
fire 6 but intimates that it is not pru- 
Gehenna Denotes a dent to go further, showing that the 
Purifying Fire. idea of ' 'reserve" controlled him from 
saying what might not be judicious. 
That God's fire is not material, but spiritual remorse 
ending in reformation, Origen teaches in many pas- 
sages. He repeatedly speaks of punishment as aion- 
ion (mistranslated in the New Testament ' 'everlast- 
ing," "eternal") and then elaborately states and de- 
fends as Christian doctrine universal salvation be- 
yond all aionion suffering and sin. Says the candid 
historian Robertson: " The great object of this emi- 
nent teacher was to harmonize Christianity with 
philosophy. He sought to combine in a Christian 
scheme the fragmentary truths scattered throughout 
other systems, to establish the Gospel in a form 
which should not present obstacles to the conversion 
of Jews, of Gnostics, and of cultivated heathens; and 
his errors arose from a too eager pursuit of this 
idea. 7 " 

The effect of his broad faith on his spirit and 
treatment of others, is in strong contrast to the bitter 
and cruel disposition exhibited by some of the early 
Christians towards heretics, such as Tertullian and 
Augustine. In reply to the charge that Christians 

«Cont. Cels. VI, 25. 

'Consult also, Mosheim, Dorner and De Pressense. 



ORIGEN. 135 

of different creeds were in enmity, he said, "Such 
of 11s as follow the doctrines of Jesus, and endeavor 
to be conformed to his precepts, in our thoughts, 
words and actions; being reviled, we bless; being 
persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat. 
Nor do we say injurious things of those who think 
differently of us. They who consider the words of 
our Lord, Blessed are the peaceable, and Blessed are 
the meek, will not hate those who corrupt the Chris- 
tian religion, nor give opprobrious names to those 
who are in error. " 

When a young teacher his zeal and firmness vin- 
dicated his name Adamantius, man of steel or ada- 
mant. Says De Pressense: "The example of Ori- 
gen was of much force in sustaining the courage of 
his disciples. He might be seen constantly in the 
prison of the pious captives carrying to them the 
consolation they needed. He stood by them till the 
last moment of triumph came, and gave them the 
parting kiss of peace on the very threshold of the 
arena or at the foot of the stake." One day he was 
carried to the temple of Serapis, and palms were 
placed in his hands to lay on the altar of the Egyp- 
tian god. Brandishing the boughs, he exclaimed, 
11 Here are the triumphal palms, not of the idol, but 
of Christ. " In a work of Origen's now only existing 
in a Latin translation is this characteristic thought: 
" The fields of the angels are our hearts; each one of 
them therefore out of the field which he cultivates, 
offers first fruits to God. If I should be able to pro- 
duce today some choice interpretation, worthy to be 
presented to the Supreme High Priest, so that out 
of all those things which we speak and teach, there 



136 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

should be somewhat considerable which may please 
the great High Priest, it might possibly happen that 
the angel who presides over the church, out of all our 
words, might choose something, and offer it as a 
kind of first fruits to the Lord, out of the small field 
of my heart. But I know I do not deserve it; nor 
am I conscious to myself that any interpretation is 
discovered by me which the angel who cultivates us 
should judge worthy to offer to the Lord, as first 
fruits, or first born. " 8 

Origen's critics are his eulogists. Gieseler re- 
marks: "To the wide extended influence of his writ- 
ings it is to be attributed, that, in the 
His Critics are midst of these furious controversies 
his Eulogists. (in the Fifth Century) thereremained 

any freedom of theological specula- 
tion whatever. " Bunsen: "Origen's death is the 
real end of free Christianity and, in particular, of free 
intellectual theology." Schaff says: " Origen is 
father of the scientific and critical investigation of 
Scripture." Jerome says he wrote more than other 
men can read. Epiphanius, an opponent, states the 
number of his works as six thousand. His books 
that survive are mostly in Latin, more or less muti- 
lated by translators. 

Eusebius says that his life is worthy of being re- 
corded from "his tender infancy." Even when a 
child " he was wholly borne away by the desire of 
becoming a martyr, " and so divine a spirit did he 
show, and such devotedness to his religion, even as 
a child, that his father, frequently, ' ' when standing 

8 Homily XI in Numbers, in Migne. 



ORIGEN. 137 

over his sleeping boy, would uncover his breast, and 
as a shrine consecrated by the Divine Spirit, rever- 
ently kiss the breast of his favorite offspring. * * * 
As his doctrine so was his life ; and as his life, so also 
was his doctrine." His Bishop, Demetrius, praised 
him highly, till "seeing him doing well, great and 
illustrious and celebrated by all, was overcome by 
human infirmity," and traduced him throughout the 
church. 

Origen was followed as teacher in the Alexan- 
drine school by his pupil Heraclas, who in turn was 
succeeded by Dionysius, another pupil, so that from 
Pant^enus, to Clemens, Origen, Heraclas and 
Dionysius, to Didymus, from say A. D. 160 to A. D. 
390, more than two centuries, the teaching in Alex- 
andria, the very center of Christian learning, was 
Universalistic. 

The struggles of such a spirit, scholar, saint, phi- 
losopher, must have been a martyrdom, and illustrate 
the power of his sublime faith, not only to sustain in 
the terrific trials through which he passed, but to 
preserve the spirit he always manifested — akin to 
that which cried on the cross , ' ' Father, forgive them, 
they know not what they do." 

The death of Origen marks an epoch in Christ- 
ianity, and signalizes the beginning of a period of 
decadence. The republicanism of 
The Death of Christianity began to give way before 

Origen. the monarchical 'tendencies that 

ripened with Constantine (A. D. 
313) and the Nicean council (A. D. 325). Clement 
and Origen represented freedom of thought, and 
a rational creed founded on the Bible, but the evil 



138 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

change that Christianity was soon to experience, was 
fairly seen, says Bunsen, about the time of Origen's 
death. "Origen, who had made a last attempt to 
preserve liberty of thought along with a rational be- 
lief in historical facts based upon the historical rec- 
ords, had failed in his gigantic efforts; he died of a 
broken heart rather than of the wounds inflicted by 
his heathen torturers. His followers * * * re- 
tained only his mystical scholasticism, without pos- 
sessing either his genius or his learning, his great 
and wide heart, or his free, truth-speaking spirit. 
More and more the teachers became bishops, and the 
bishops absolute governors, the majority of whom 
strove to establish as law their speculations upon 
Christianity." 

His comprehensive mind and vast sympathy, and 
his intense tendency to generalization, caused Origen 
to entertain hospitably in his philosophical system 
many ideas that now are seen to be inconsistent and 
untenable ; but his fantastic, allegorical interpretation 
of Scripture, his vagaries concerning pre-existence, 
and his disposition to include all themes and theories 
in his system, did not swerve him from the truths and 
facts of Christian revelation. His defects were but as 
spots on the sun. And his vagaries were by no means in 
excess of those of the average theologian of his times. 

Origen considered philosophy as necessary to Chris- 
tianity as is geometry to philosophy ; but that all things 
essential to salvation are plainly 
A Christian taught- in the Scriptures, within the 

Philosopher. comprehension of the ordinary mind. 

" Origen * * * was the prince 
of schoolmen and scholars, as subtle as Aquinas, as 



ORIGEN. 139 

erudite as Routh or Teschendorf. He is a man of 
one book, in a sense. The Bible, its text, its expo- 
sition, furnished him with the motive for incessant 
toil." (Neoplatonism, by C. Bigg, D. D., London, 
1895, p. 163. ) The truths taught in the Bible may- 
be made by philosophers themes on which the mind 
may indefinitely expatiate ; and those competent will 
find interior, spiritual, recondite meanings not seen 
on the surface. Yet he constantly taught " that such 
affinity and congruity exist between Christianity and 
human reason, that not only the grounds, but also 
the forms, of all Christian doctrines may be ex- 
plained by the dictates of philosophy. * * * That 
it is vastly important to the honor and advantage of 
Christianity that all its doctrines be traced back to 
the sources of all truth, or be shown to flow from the 
principles of philosophy; and consequently that a 
Christian theologian should exert his ingenuity and 
his industry primarily to demonstrate the harmony 
between religion and reason, and to show that there 
is nothing taught in the Scriptures but what is 
founded in reason. " 

He held to the "most scrupulous Biblicism and 
the most conscientious regard for the rule of faith, 
conjoined with the philosophy of religion. " * * * 
He " was the most influential theologian in the 
Oriental church, the father of theological science, 
the author of ecclesiastical dogmatics. * * * An 
orthodox traditionalist, a strong Bib- 

A Bible Universalist. lical theologian, a keen Realistic 
philosopher who translated the con- 
tent of faith into ideas, completed 

the structure of the world that is within, and finally 



140 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

let nothing pass save knowledge of God and of self, in 
closest union, which exalts us above the world, and 
conducts unto deification. * * * Life is a disci- 
pline, a conflict under the permission and leading of 
God, which will end with the conquest and destruc- 
tion of evil. * * * According to Origen, all 
spirits will, in the form of their individual lives, be 
finally rescued and glorified (apokatastasis)." 9 Mos- 
heim considered these fatal errors, while we should 
regard them as valuable principles. The famous 
historian assures us that Origen was entirely igno- 
rant of the doctrine of Christ's substitutional sacrifice. 
He had no faith in the idea that Christ suffered in 
man's stead, but taught that he died in man's be- 
half. 

The known works of Origen consist of brief 
1 ' Notes on Scripture, " only a few fragments of which 

are left ; his " Commentaries, " many 
The Works of which are in Migne's collection; 

of Origen. his ' ' Contra Celsum, "or " Against 

Celsus, " which is complete and in the 
original Greek; " Stromata," only three fragments 
of which survive in a Latin translation; a fragment 
on the " Resurrection; " practical " Essays and Let- 
ters," but two of the latter remaining, and "Of 
Principles, " " De Principiis," or Hepi'kpx&v. Nearly 
all the original Greek of this great work has per- 
ished. The Latin translation by Rufinus is very 
loose and inaccurate. It is frequently a mere para- 
phrase. Jerome, whose translation is better than that 
of Rufinus, accuses the latter of unfaithfulness in his 

^Harnack's Outlines, pp. 150-154. 



ORIGEN. 141 

translation, and made a new version, only small por- 
tions of which have come down to modern times, so 
that we cannot accurately judge of the character of 
this great work. A comparison of the Greek of Ori- 
gen's " Against Celsus " with the Latin version of 
Rufinus exhibits great discrepancies. Indeed, Ru- 
finus confesses that he had so " smoothed and cor- 
rected " as to leave "nothing which could appear 
discordant with our belief." He claimed, however, 
that he had done so because " his (Origen's) books 
had been corrupted by heretics and malevolent per- 
sons, " and accordingly he had suppressed or enlarged 
the text to what he thought Origen ought to have 
said ! And having acknowledged so much he adjures 
all by their "belief in the kingdom to come, by the 
mystery of the resurrection from the dead, and by 
that everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his 
angels " to make no further alterations! He reiter- 
ates his confession elsewhere, and says he has trans- 
lated nothing that seems to him to contradict Ori- 
gen's other opinions, but has passed it by, as " inter- 
polated and forged. " For the sake of "brevity, " he 
says he has sometimes " curtailed." 

Says De Pressense : " Celsus collected in his quiver 
all the objections possible to be made, and there is 
scarcely one missing of all the arrows which in sub- 
sequent times have been aimed against the supernat- 
ural in Christianity. " To every point made by Cel- 
sus, Origen made a triumphant reply, anticipating, 
in fact, modern objections, and " gave to Christian 
antiquity its most complete apology. * * * Many 
centuries were to elapse before the church could pre- 
sent to the world any other defense of her faith com- 



H2 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

parable to this noble book." "It remains the master- 
piece of ancient apology, for solidity of basis, vigor 
of argument, and breadth of eloquent exposition. 
The apologists of every age were to find in it an inex- 
haustible mine, as well as incomparable model of that 
royal, moral method inaugurated by St. Paul and St. 
John." 

An illustration of his manner may be given in 
his reference to the attack of Celsus on the miracles 
of Christ. Celsus dares not deny them, only a hun- 
dred years after Christ, and says: " Be it so, we ac- 
cept the facts as genuine," and then proceeds to rank 
them with the tricks of Egyptian sorcerers, and asks : 
"Did anyone ever look upon those impostors as di- 
vinely aided, who for hire healed the sick and wrought 
wonderful works? If Jesus did work miracles it was 
through sorcery, and deserves therefore the greater 
contempt. " In reply Origen insists on the miracles, 
but places the higher evidence of Christianity on a 
moral basis. He says: " Show me the magician who 
calls upon the spectators of his prodigies to reform 
their life, or who teaches his admirers the fear of 
God, and seeks to persuade them to act as those who 
must appear before him as their judge. The magi- 
cians do nothing of the sort, either because they are 
incapable of it, or because they have no such desire. 
Themselves charged with crimes the most shameful 
and infamous, how should they attempt the reforma- 
tion of the morals of others? The miracles of Christ, 
on the contrary, all bear the impress of his own holi- 
ness, and he ever uses them as a means of winning to 
the cause of goodness and truth those who witness 
them. Thus he presented his own life as the perfect 



ORIGEN. 143 

model, not only to his immediate disciples, but to all 
men. He taught his disciples to make known to those 
who heard them, the perfect will of God; and he re- 
vealed to mankind, far more by his life and works 
than by his miracles, the secret of that holiness by 
which it is possible in all things to please God. If 
such was the life of Jesus, how can he be compared 
to mere charlatans, and why may we not believe that 
he was indeed God manifested in the flesh for the 
salvation of our race?" 10 

The historian Cave says : ' ' Celsus was an Epi- 
curean philosopher contemporary with Lucian, the 
witty atheist, * * * a man of wit and parts, and 
had all the advantages which learning, philosophy, 
and eloquence could add to him; but a severe and 
incurable enemy to the Christian religion, against 
which he wrote a book entitled AXrjOrjs Aoyos, or 'The 
True Discourse, ' wherein he attempted Christianity 
with all the arts of insinuation, all the wicked reflec- 
tions, virulent aspersions, plausible reasons, where- 
unto a man of parts and malice was capable to as- 
sault it. To this Origen returns a full and solid 
answer, in eight books ; wherein, as he had the bet- 
ter cause, so he managed it with that strength of 
reason, clearness of argument, and convictive evi- 
dence of truth, that were there nothing else to tes- 
tify the abilities of this great man, this book alone 
were enough to do it. " 

Eusebius declared that Origen "not only an- 

WTJhlhorn (B. II, c. ii) says that in Celsus's attack "Every argument is 
to be tound which has been brought against Christianity up to the present 
day." "The True Word of Celsus * * * is to be found almost entire 
in the treatise which Origen wrote in reply." Neoplatonism, by C. Bigg 
D. D. 



144 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

sweredall the objections that had ever been brought, 
but had supplied in anticipation an- 
The Final Answer swers to all that ever could be brought 
to Skepticism. against Christianity. " Celsus, the 
ablest of all the assailants of Christi- 
anity, wrote his ''True Discourse" about a century 
before Origen's time. It is the fountain whence the 
enemies of Christianity have obtained the materials 
for their attacks on the Christian religion. It gar- 
bles texts, confounds the different heresies with the 
accepted form of Christianity, and employs the keen- 
est logic, the bitterest sarcasm, and all the weapons 
of the most accomplished and unscrupulous contro- 
versy, and exhausts learning, argument, irony, cal- 
umny, and all the skilled resources of one of the 
ablest of men in his assault on the new religion. 
Origen's reply, written A. D., 249, proceeds on the 
ground already established by Clement : the essen- 
tial relation between God and man; the universal 
operation of God's grace; the preparation for the 
Gospel by Paganism ; the residence of the genius of 
divinity in each human soul ; the resurrection of the 
soul rather than of the body, and the curative power 
of all the divine punishments. He triumphantly 
meets Celsus on every point, argument with argu- 
ment, invective with invective, satire with satire, 
and through all breathes a sublime and lofty spirit, 
immeasurably superior to that of his opponent. He 
leaves nothing of the great skeptic's unanswered. 
Among the points made by Celsus and thor- 
oughly disposed of by Origen were some that have 
in recent years beeu presented: that there is nothing 
new in Christian teaching; that the pretended mira- 



ORIGEN. 145 

cles were not by the supernatural act of God ; that 
the prophecies were misapplied and unfulfilled ; that 
Christ borrowed from Plato, etc. 

The first system of Christian theology ever 
framed — let it never be forgotten — was published by 
O rig en, A. D. 230, and it declared 
The First of Chris- universal restoration as the issue of 
tian Theologians, the divine government ; so that this 
eminent Universalist has the grand 
pre-eminence of being not only the founder of scien- 
tific Christian theology, but also the first great de- 
fender of the Christian religion against its assailants. 
"De Principiis" is a profound book, a fundamental 
and essential element of which is the doctrine of the 
universal restoration of all fallen beings to their 
original holiness and union with God. 

Origen's most learned production was the "Hex- 
apla." He was twenty-eight years on this great 
Biblical work. The first form was the "Tetrapla," 
containing in four columns the "Septuagint," and 
the texts of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. 
This he enlarged into "Hexapla" with the Hebrew 
text in both Hebrew and Greek letters. Many of 
the books of the Bible had two additional columns, 
and some a seventh Greek version. This was the 
"Octapla. " This immense monument of learning 
and industry consisted of fifty volumes. It was 
never transcribed, and perished, probably destroyed 
by the Arabs in the destruction of the Alexandrian 
Library. u 

Origen was of medium height, but of such vigor 
and physical endurance that he acquired the title 

"Kitto Cyclo; Davidson's Biblical Criticism, Vol. I. 



146 universalism in the early centuries. 

Adamantius, the man of steel, or adamant. But he 
constantly wore a demeanor of benignity and maj- 
esty, of kindliness and sanctity, that won all with 
whom he came in contact. 

Quotation of Origen's Language. 

The following statements from the pen of Ori- 
gen, and abstracts of his views by eminent authors of 
different creeds, will show the great scholar's ideas of 
human destiny. Many more than are here given might 
be presented, but enough are quoted to demonstrate 
beyond a perad venture that the great philosopher 
and divine, the equally great scholar and saint, was a 
Universalist. There is no little difficulty in reach- 
ing Origen's opinions on some topics — happily not on 
man's final destiny — in consequence of most of his 
works existing only in Latin translations confessedly 
inaccurate. He complained of perversions while 
living, and warned against misconstruction. 12 But 
no believer in endless punishment can claim the 
sanction of his great name. 

He writes: "The end of the world, then, and 
the final consummation will take place when every- 
one shall be subjected to punishment 
Origen's for his sins; a time which God alone 

Exact Words. knows, when he will bestow on each 

one what he deserves. We think, in- 
deed, that the goodness of God, through his Christ, may 
recall all his creatures to one end, even his enemies 
being conquered and subdued. For thus says Holy 
Scripture, ' The Lord said to my Lord, sit thou at 
my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy foot- 

12 De Principiis, Crombie's Translation. Epist. ad Amicos. 



ORIGEN. 147 

stool. ' And if the meaning of the prophet be less 
clear, we may ascertain it from the apostle Paul, who 
speaks more openly, thus : ' For Christ must reign 
until he has put all enemies under his feet.' But 
even if that unreserved declaration of the apostle do 
not sufficiently inform us what is meant by ' enemies 
being placed under his feet, ' listen to what he says 
in the following words : ' For all things must be put 
under him. ' What, then, is this c putting under ' by 
which all things must be made subject to Christ? I 
am of opinion that it is this very subjection by which 
we also wish to be subject to him, by which the apos- 
tles also were subject, and all the saints who have 
been followers of Christ. For the word * subjection, ' 
by which we are subject to Christ, indicates that the 
salvation which proceeds from him belongs to his 
subjects, agreeably to the declaration of David, 
' Shall not my soul be subject unto God? From him 
cometh my salvation. ' " * * * " Seeing, then, that 
such is the end, when all enemies will be subdued to 
Christ, when death — the last enemy — shall be de- 
stroyed, and when the kingdom shall be delivered up 
by Christ (to whom all things are subject) to God 
the Father; let us, I say, from such an end as this, 
contemplate the beginnings of things. " * * * 4 'The 
apostolic teaching is that the soul, having a substance 
and life of its own, shall, after its departure from the 
world, be rewarded according to its deserts, being 
destined to obtain either an inheritance of eternal life 
and blessedness, if its actions shall have procured 
this for it, or to be delivered up to eternal fire and 
punishments, if the guilt of its crimes shall have 
brought it down to this." De Prin. I, vi: 1, 2. 



h8 universalism in the early centuries. 

Unquestionably Origen, in the original Greek of 
which the Latin translation only exists, here used 
11 aionios" (inaccurately rendered everlasting and 
eternal in the New Testament) in the sense of Km- 
ited duration; and fire, as an emblem of purification, 
for he says: 

"When thou hear est of the wrath of God, be- 
lieve not that this wrath and indignation are passions 
of God; they are condescensions of language designed 
to convert and improve the child. * * * So God 
is described as angry, and says that he is indignant, 
in order that thou mayest convert and be improved, 
while in fact he is not angry." 13 

Origen severely condemns those who cherish un- 
worthy thoughts of God, regarding him, he says, as 
possessing a disposition that would be a slander on a 
wicked savage. He insists that the purpose of all pun- 
ishment, by a good God, must be medicinal. 14 

In arguing that aionios as applied to punishment 
does not mean endless, he says that the sin that is 
not forgiven in this seon or the aeon to 
Meaning of come, would be in some one of the 

Aionios aeons following. His argument that 

age (undoubtedly aion in the origi- 
nal, of which, unfortunately, we have only the Latin 
translation) is limited, is quite complete in "De Prin- 
cipiis." This world is an age (sceculum, aion) and a 
conclusion of many ages (seculormri). He concludes 
his argument by referring to the time when, beyond 
* ' an age and ages, perhaps even more than ages of 

13 In Jeremiah Horn, xviii: 6, Ag. Cels. IV. xxii. 

w Selecta in Exodum; cKaoros ovv crwaScos a/xaprtas cavraJ 
€V)(€<r$o) KoXacrOrjvai. Also,DePrin. I, vi: 3. 



ORIGEN. 149 

ages," that period will come, viz., when all things 
are no longer in an age, but when God is all in all. 15 

He quotes the Scripture phrase ' ' Forever and 
ever and beyond" (in sceculum et in sceculum et adhuc, 
forever and further), and insists that evil, being- a ne- 
gation, cannot be eternal. 

Dr. Bigg sums up Origen's views: ''Slowly yet 
certainly the blessed change must come, the purify- 
ing fire must eat up the dross and leave the pure 
gold. * * * One by one we shall enter into rest, 
never to stray again. Then when death, the last 
enemy, is destroyed, when the tale of his children is 
complete, Christ will ' drink wine in the kingdom of 
his Father.' This is the end, when ' all shall be one, 
as Christ and the Father are one, ' when ' God shall be 
all in all.'" 

Origen never dogmatizes; rests largely on gen- 
eral principles; says that "justice and goodness are in 
their highest manifestations identical; that God does 
not punish, but has made man so that in virtue only 
can he find peace and happiness, because he has 
made him like himself; that suffering is not a tax 
upon sin, but the wholesome reaction by which the 
diseased soul struggles to cast out the poison of its 
malady ; that, therefore, if we have done wrong it is 
good to suffer, because the anguish of returning 
health will cease when health is restored, and cannot 
cease till then. Again, that evil is against the plan 
of God, is created not by him but by ourselves ; is 
therefore, properly speaking, a negation, and as such 
cannot be eternal. These are, in the main, Greek 

MDePrin. II. Hi: 5. 



150 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

thoughts, their chief source is the Gorgias of Plato; 
but his final appeal is always to Scripture." 

Huet quotes Leontius as saying that Origen 
argued from the fact that aionios means finite dura- 
tion, the limited duration of future punishment. 
Origen 's argument for the term-inability of punish- 
ishment was based on the meaning of this word 
aionios™ Surely he, a Platonist in his knowledge of 
Greek, should know its signification. 17 

Origen on the Purifying Fire. 

On I Cor. iii: 2, he says (Ag. Cels.V. xv.): The 
fire that will consume the world at the last day is a 
purifying fire, which all must pass through, though 
it will impart no pain to the good. In expressing 
eternity Origen does not depend upon aion, but 
qualifies the word by an adjective, thus: — ton apeiron 
aiona. Barnabas, Hermas, "Sibylline Oracles," 
Justin Martyr, Polycarp, Theoprtlus and Ire- 
n^eus all apply the word aionios to punishment, but 
two of these taught annihilation, and one universal 
salvation beyond aionion punishment. 

God is a "Consuming Fire, " Origen thinks, be- 
cause he "does indeed consume and utterly destroy; 
that he consumes evil thoughts, wicked actions, and 
sinful desires when they find their way into the 
minds of believers. " He teaches that "God's con- 
suming fire works with the good as with the evil, 
annihilating that which harms his children. This 

16 Canon Farrar says in Mercy and Judgment, p,409, "For an exhaus- 
tive treatment of this word aionios see Hanson's Aion Aionios." 

17 Some of the texts Origen quotes in proof of universal salvatfon: 
Luke iii: 16; I Cor. iii: 15; lsa. xvi;4; xii: 1; xxiv:22; xlvi:14, 15; Micah vii:9; 
Ezek. xvi: 53. 55; Jer. xxv:15. 16; Matt, xviii:30; John x: 16; Rom. xi:25, 26; 
Rom. xi: 32 ; I Pet. iii: 18-21, etc. 



ORIGEN. 151 

fire is one that each one kindles ; the fuel and food is 
each one's sins. " 18 ' What is the meaning of eternal 
fire?" he asks: "When the soul has gathered to- 
gether a multitude of evil works, and an abun- 
dance of sins against itself, at a suitable time all that 
assembly of evils boils up to punishment, and is set 
on fire to chastisement," etc. Just as physicians 
employ drugs, and sometimes ' 'the evil has to be 
burned out by fire, how much more is it to be un- 
derstood that God our Physician, desiring to remove 
the defects of our souls, should apply the punishment 
of fire. " * * * "Our God is a 'consuming fire' 
in the sense in which we have taken the word ; and 
thus he enters in as a 'refiner's fire' to refine the ra- 
tional nature, which has been filled with the lead of 
wickedness, and to free it from the other impure ma- 
terials which adulterate the natural gold or silver, so 
to speak, of the soul." Towards the conclusion of 
his reply to Celsus, Origen has the following pas- 
sage: "The Stoics, indeed, hold that when the 
strongest of the elements prevails all things shall be 
turned into fire. But our belief is that the Word 
shall prevail over the entire rational creation, and 
change every soul into his own perfection ; in which 
state every one, by the mere exercise of his power, 
will choose what he desires, and obtain what he 
chooses. For although, in the diseases and wounds 
of the body, there are some which no medical skill 
can cure, yet we hold that in the mind there is 
no evil so strong that it may not be overcome by 

WDePrin. II, x: 3, 4. I, i. Ag. Cels. iv, 13. 



152 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

the Supreme Word and God. For stronger than all 
the evils in the soul is the Word, and the healing 
power that dwells in him; and this healing he ap- 
plies, according to the will of God, to every man. 
The consummation of all things is the destruction of 
evil, although as to the question whether it shall be 
so destroyed that it can never anywhere arise again, 
it is beyond our present purpose to say. Many 
things are said obscurely in the prophecies on the 
total destruction of evil, and the restoration to 
righteousness of every soul ; but it will be enough for 
our present purpose to quote the following passage 
from Zephaniah," etc. Ag. Cels. VIII. lxxii. 

Thus Origen interprets "fire" in the Bible not 
only as a symbol of the sinner's suffering but of his 
purification. The "consuming fire " is a "refiner's 
fire," It consumes the sins, and refines and purifies 
the sinner. It burns the sinner's works, " hay, wood 
and stubble," that result from wickedness. The 
torture is real, the purification sure; fire is a symbol 
of God's severe, certain, but salutary discipline. God's 
"wrath" is apparent, not real. There is no passion 
on his part. What we call wrath is another name 
for his disciplinary processes. God would not tell 
us to put away anger, wrath (Origen says) and then 
be guilty himself of what he prohibits in us. He 
declares that the punishment which is said to be by 
fire is understood to be applied with the object of 
healing, as taught by Isaiah, etc. (xiii: 16; xlvii: 
14, 15; x: 17). The "eternal fire" is curative. 

Gehenna and its fires have the same signification : 
"We find that what was termed 'Gehenna* or 'the 
Valley of Ennom,' was included in the lot of the 



ORIGEN. 153 

tribe of Benjamin, in which Jerusalem also was sit- 
uated. And seeking to ascertain 
Origen on what might be the inference from 

Gehenna. the heavenly Jerusalem belonging to 

the lot of Benjamin, and the Valley 
of Ennom, we find a certain confirmation of what is 
said regarding the place of punishment, intended for 
the purification of such souls as are to be purified 
by torments, agreeably to the same, — 'the Lord com - 
eth like a refiner's fire and like fuller's soap; and he 
shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver and of 
gold.'" Ag. Cels.. VI. xxvi. 

In reply to the charge of Celsus that Christians 

teach that sinners will be burnt up by the fires of 

judgment, Origen replies that such 

. , _. . " thoughts had been entertained by 

ish Christians" . , ^ . . 

on Fire. certain foolish Christians, who were 

unable to see distinctly the sense of 
each particular passage, or unwilling to devote the 
necessary labor to the investigation of Scripture. 
* * * And perhaps, as it is appropriate to chil- 
dren that some things should be addressed to them 
in a manner befitting their infantile condition, to 
convert them, * * * so such ideas as Celsus 
refers to are taught. " But he adds that " those who 
require the administration of punishment by fire" 
experience it * 'with a view to an end which is suita- 
ble for God to bring upon those who have been cre- 
ated in his image. " In reply to the charge of Cel- 
sus that Christians teach that God will act the part 
of a cook in burning men, Origen says, — "not like 
a cook but like a God who is a benefactor of those 
who stand in need of discipline of fire." V. xv, xvi. 



154 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Origen declares that sinners who are "incurable" 
are converted by the threat of punishment. "As to 
the punishments threatened against the ungodly, 
these will come upon them after they have refused 
all remedies, and have been, as we may say, visited 
with an incurable malady of sinfulness. Such is our 
doctrine of punishment; and the inculcation of this 
doctrine turns many away from their sins. " 19 

Pamphilus and Eusebius in their "Apology tor 
Origen " quote these words from him: " We are to 
understand that God, our physician, in order to re- 
move those disorders which our souls contract from 
various sins and abominations, uses that painful mode 
of cure, and brings those torments of fire upon such 
as have lost the health of the soul, just as an earthly 
physician in extreme cases subjects his patients to 
cautery." 

But Origen always makes salvation depend on 
the consenting will ; hence he says, (De Prin. II, i:2), 
11 God the Father of all things, in order to ensure the 
salvation of all his creatures through the ineffable 
plan of his Word and wisdom, so arranged each of 
these, that every spirit, whether soul or rational 
existence, however called, should not be compelled 
by force, against the liberty of his own will, to any 
other course than that to which the motives of his 
own mind led him. " 

Origen teaches that in the final estate of universal 
human happiness there will be differing degrees of 
blessedness. After quoting I Thess. iv 115-17, he 
says: "A diversity of translation and a different 

* 9 Ag. Cels. VIII. xxxix. xl. 



ORIGEN. 155 

glory Will be given to every one according to the 
merits of his actions ; and every one will be in that 
order which the merits of his work have procured for 
him." 

Mosheim thus expresses Origen's views: "As 
all divine punishments are salutary and useful, so 
also that which divine justice has in- 
Mosheim and flicted on vitiated souls, although it 

Robertson. is a great evil, is nevertheless salu- 

tary in its tendency, and should con- 
duct them to blessedness. For the tiresome conflict 
of opposite propensities, the onsets of the passions, 
the pains and sorrows and other evils arising from 
the connection of the mind with the body, and with 
a sentient soul, may and should excite the captive 
soul to long for the recovery of its lost happiness, 
and lead it to concentrate all its energies in order to 
escape from its misery. For God acts like a physi- 
cian, who employs harsh and bitter remedies, not 
only to cure the diseased, but also to induce them to 
preserve their health and to avoid whatever might 
impair it. " 20 

The candid historian Robertson gives an acurate 
statement of Origen's eschatology, with references 
to his works, as follows: "All punishment, he holds, 
is merely corrective and remedial, being ordained in 
order that all creatures may be restored to their 
original perfection. At the resurrection all mankind 
will have to pass through a fire ; the purged spirits 
will enter into Paradise, a place of training for the 
consummation ; the wicked will remain in the 'fire, ' 

*>Com. II, pp. 194, 195. 



156 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

which, however, is not described as material, but as 
a mental and spiritual misery. The matter and food 
of it, he says, are our sins, which, when swollen to 
the height, are inflamed to become our punishment; 
and the outer darkness is the darkness of ignorance. 
But the condition of these spirits is not without hope, 
although thousands of years may elapse before their 
suffering shall have wrought its due effect on them. 
On the other hand, those who are admitted into 
Paradise may abuse their free will, as in the begin- 
ning, and may consequently be doomed to a renewal 
of their sojourn in the flesh. Every reasonable 
creature — even Satan himself — may be turned from 
evil to good, so as not to be excluded from salva- 
tion. " 21 

Notwithstanding Robertson's doubt, expressed 
elsewhere in his history, whether Origen taught the 
salvability of "devils," Origen's language is clear. 
He says : " But whether any of these orders who act 
under the government of the Devil * * * will in 
a future world be converted to righteousness * * * 
or whether persistent and inveterate wickedness may 
be changed by the power of habit into nature, is a 
result which you yourself, reader, may approve of;" 
but he goes on to say that in the eternal and invisi- 
ble worlds, ' ' all those beings are arranged according 
to a regular plan, in the order and degree of their 
merits; so that some of them in the first, others in 
the second, some even in the last times, after having 
undergone heavier and severer punishments, endured 
for a lengthened period, and for many ages, so to 

"Hist. Christ. Church, I, p. 114. 



ORIGEN. 157 

speak, improved by this stern method of training, 
and restored at first by the instruction of the angels, 
and subsequently by the powers of a higher grade 
and thus advancing through each stage to a better 
condition, reach even to that which is invisible and 
eternal, having traveled through, by a kind of train- 
ing, every single office of the heavenly powers. 
From which, I think, this will appear to follow as an 
inference that every rational nature may, in passing 
from one order to another, go through each to all, 
and advance from all to each, while made the sub- 
ject of various degrees of proficiency and failure ac- 
cording to its own actions and endeavors, put forth 
in the enjoyment of its power of freedom of will. " * 
Says the "Dictionary of Christian Biography:" 
Origen " openly proclaims his belief that the good- 
ness of God, when each sinner shall 
f Ch . 1C ti 10nary have received the penalty of his sins, 
Biography." w ^> through Christ, lead the whole 

universe to one end. " * ' He is led to 
examine into the nature of the fire which tries every 
man's work, and is the penalty of evil, and he finds it in 
the mind itself — in the memory of evil. The sinner's 
life lies before him as an open scroll, and he looks on 
it with shame and anguish unspeakable. The Phy- 
sician of our souls can use his own processes of heal- 
ing. The * outer darkness J and Paradise are but dif- 
ferent stages in the education of the great school of 
souls, and their upward and onward progress de- 
pends on their purity and love of truth. He who is 



2 2 0rigen held that aaov meant limited duration, and consequently 
that atoivecTTWv dtwvoov must mean limited. See De Prin. I, vi: 3. 



158 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

saved is saved as by fire, that if he has in him any 
mixture of lead the fire may melt it out, so that all 
may be made as the pure gold. The more the lead 
the greater will be the burning, so that even if there 
be but little gold, that little will be purified. * * * 
The tire of the last day, will, it may be, be at once a 
punishment and a remedy, burning up the wood, 
hay, stubble, according to each man's merits, yet all 
working to the destined end of restoring man to the 
image of God, though, as yet, men must be treat- 
ed as children, and the terrors of the judgment 
rather than the final restoration have to be brought 
before those who can be converted only by fears and 
threats. * * * Gehenna stands for the torments 
that cleanse the soul, but for the many who are 
scarcely restrained by the fears of eternal torments, 
it is not expedient to go far into that matter, hardly, 
indeed, to commit our thoughts to writing, but to 
dwell on the certain and inevitable retribution for all 
evil. * * * God is indeed a consuming fire, but 
that which he consumes is the evil that is in the souls 
of men, not the souls themselves. " (Dr. A. W. W. Dale. ) 

Translation of Origen's Language on Universal 
Restoration. 

Crombie's translation (Ante-Nicene Library, Ed- 
inburgh, 1872) thus renders Origen: "But as it is in 
mockery that Celsus says we speak of ' God coming 
down like a torturer bearing fire ' and thus compels 
us unseasonably to investigate words of deeper 
meaning, we shall make a few remarks. * * * The 
divine Word says that our ' God is a consuming fire ' 
and that ' He draws rivers of fire before him ; ' nay, 



ORIGEN. 159 

that he even entereth in as 'a refiner's fire, and as a 
fuller's herb ' to purify his own people. But when 
he is said to be a ' consuming- fire ' we inquire what 
are the things which are appropriate to be consumed 
by God. And we assert that they are wickedness 
and the works which result from it, and which, being 
figuratively called 'wood, hay, stubble,' God con- 
sumes as a fire. The wicked man, accordingly, is 
said to build up on the previously laid foundation of 
reason, ' wood, and hay, and stubble. ' If, then, any 
one can show that these words were differently un- 
derstood by the writer, and can prove that the wicked 
man literally builds up ' wood, or hay, or stubble, ' it 
is evident that the fire must be understood to be ma- 
terial, and an object of sense. But if, on the con- 
trary, the works of the wicked man are spoken of 
figuratively, under the names of 'wood, or hay, or 
stubble,' why does it not at once occur (to inquire) 
in what sense the word ' fire ' is to be taken, so that 
' wood ' of such a kind should be consumed? For the 
Scripture says : ' The fire shall try each man's work 
of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which 
he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. 
If any man's work be burned, he shall suffer loss.' 
But what work can be spoken of in these words as 
being ' burned, ' save all that results from wicked- 
ness? " Ag. Cels: IV. xiii; xciv. 

One of the unaccountable mysteries of religious 
thinking is that all Christians should not have agreed 
with Origen on this point. ''God is Love;" love, 
which from its nature can only consume that which 
is inimical to its object, — Man, and not man him- 
self. 



160 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Again, ' ' If then that subjection be good and salu- 
tary by which the Son is said to be subject to the 
Father, it is an extremely rational and logical infer- 
ence to deduce that the subjection also of enemies 
which is said to be made to the Son of God, should 
be understood as being also salutary and useful ; as if, 
when the Son is said to be subject to the Father, the 
perfect restoration of the whole of creation is signi- 
fied, so also, when enemies are said to be subjected 
to the Son of God, the salvation of the conquered 
and the restoration of the lost is in that understood 
to consist. This subjection, however, will be ac- 
complished in certain ways, and after certain train- 
ing, and at certain times ; for it is not to be imagined 
that the subjection is to be brought about by the 
pressure of necessity (lest the whole world should 
then appear to be subdued to God by force), but by 
word, reason and doctrine ; by a call to a better course 
of things; by the best systems of training; by the em- 
ployment also of suitable and appropriate threaten- 
ings, which will justly impend over those who despise 
any care or attention to their salvation and useful- 
ness." DePrin.III,v. "I am of opinion that the expres- 
sion by which God is said to be 'all in all,' means 
that he is ' all ' in each individual person. Now he 
will be ' all' in each individual in this way : when all 
which any rational understanding cleansed from the 
dregs of every sort of vice, and with every cloud of 
wickedness completely swept away, can either feel, 
or understand, or think, will be wholly God; and 
when it will no longer behold or retain anything else 
than God, but when God will be the measure and 
standard of all its movements, and thus God will be 



ORIGEN. 161 

' all, ' for there will no longer be any distinction of 
good and evil, seeing evil nowhere exists ; for God is all 
things, and to him no evil is near. * * * So, then, 
when the end has been restored to the beginning, 
and the termination of things compared with their 
commencement, that condition of things will be re- 
established in which rational nature was placed, 
when it had no need to eat of the tree of the knowl- 
edge of good and evil ; so that, when all feeling of 
wickedness has been removed, and the individual has 
been purified and cleansed, he who alone is the one 
good God becomes to him ' all, ' and that not in the 
case of a few individuals, or of a considerable num- 
ber, but he himself is ' all in all. ' And when death 
shall no longer anywhere exist, nor the sting of death, 
nor any evil at all, then verily God will be 'all in 
all. ' " Thus the final restoration of the moral uni- 
verse is not to be wrought in violation of the will of 
the creature: the work of " transforming and restor- 
ing all things, in whatever manner they are made, to 
some useful aim, and to the common advantage of 
all," no "soul or rational existence is compelled by 
force against the liberty of his own will. "DePrin. III,vi. 
Again : ' ' Let us see now what is the freedom of 
the creature, or the termination of its bondage. 
When Christ shall have delivered up the kingdom to 
God, even the Father, then also those living things, 
when they shall have first been made the kingdom of 
Christ, shall be delivered, along with the whole of 
that kingdom, to the rule of the Father, that when 
God shall be all in all, they also, since they are a 
part of all things, may have God in themselves, as he 
is in all things. " Origen regarded the application to 



162 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

punishment of the word aionws, mistranslated ever- 
lasting, as in perfect harmony with this view, saying 
that the punishment of sin, " though ' aionion,' is not 
endless." He observes further: cl The last enemy, 
moreover, who is called death, is said on this account 
(that all may be one, without diversity) to be de- 
stroyed that there may not be anything left of a 
mournful kind, when death does not exist, nor any- 
thing that is adverse when there is no enemy. The 
destruction of the last enemy, indeed, is to be under- 
stood not as if its substance, which was formed by 
God, is to perish, but because its mind and hostile 
will, which came not from God, but from itself, are 
to be destroyed. Its destruction, therefore, will not 
be its non-existence, but its ceasing to be an enemy, 
and (to be) death. And this result must be under- 
stood as being brought about not suddenly, but 
slowly and gradually, seeing that the process of 
amendment and correction will take place imper- 
ceptibly in the individual instances during the lapse 
of countless and unmeasured ages, some outstripping 
others, and tending by a swifter course towards per- 
fection, while others again follow close at hand, and 
some again a long way behind ; and thus, through the 
numerous and uncounted orders of progressive 
beings who are being reconciled to God from a state 
of enmity, the last enemy is finally reached, who is 
called death, so that he also may be destroyed and no 
longer be an enemy. When, therefore, all rational 
souls shall have been restored to a condition of this 
kind, then the nature of this body of ours will under- 
go a change into the glory of a spiritual body." 

In "Contra Celsum" (B. VIII. ), ORiGENsays: "We 



ORIGEN. 163 

assert that the Word, who is the Wisdom of God, 
shall bring together all intelligent creatures, and 
convert them into his own perfection, through the 
instrumentality of their free will and of their own 
exertions. The Word is more powerful than all the 
diseases of the soul, and he applies his remedies to 
each one according to the pleasure of God — for the 
name of God is to be invoked by all, so that all shall 
serve him with one consent. " 

The heresy that has wrought so much harm in 
modern theology, that justness and goodness in God 
are different and hostile attributes 
Mercy and Justice was advocated, Origen says, by 
Harmonious. "some" in his day, and he meets it 

admirably (De Prin. II, vn-4), by 
showing that the two attributes are identical in their 
purpose. * 'Justice is goodness, " he declares. "God 
confers benefits justly, and punishes with kindness, 
since neither goodness without justice, nor justice 
without goodness, can display the dignity of the 
divine nature. " 

Origen argues that God must be passionless be- 
cause unchanging. Wrath, hatred, repentance, are 
ascribed to him in the Bible because 
Origen's Grand human infirmities require such a pre- 
Statement. sentation. Punishment results from 

sin as a legitimate consequence, and 
is not God's direct work. * * * In the Restitu- 
tion God's wrath will not be spoken of. God really 
has but one passion — Love. All he does illustrates 
some phase of this divine emotion. He declares that 
with God the one fixed point is the End, when God 
shall be all in all. All intelligent work has a perfect 



1 64 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

end. Of Col. i: 20 and Heb. ii: 19, he says: Christ is 
" the Great High Priest, not only for man btitfor every 
rational creature." In his Homilies on Ezekiel, he 
says: "If it had not been conducive to the conver- 
sion of sinners to employ suffering, never would a 
compassionate and benevolent God have inflicted 
punishment." Love, which "never faileth," will 
preserve the whole creation from all possibility of 
further fall; and "God will be all in all," forever. 

Note.— Celsus seems to have been the first heathen author to name the 
Christian books, so that they were well-known within a century of our Lord's 
death. We, undoubtedly, have every objection, advanced by him against 
Christianity, preserved in Origen's reply. He not only attacks our faith 
on minor points, but his chief assaults are directed to show that the new re- 
ligion is not a special revelation; that its doctrines are not new; that it is 
not superior to other religions; that its doctrines are unreasonable; that if 
God really spoke to men, it would not be to one small nation, in an obscure 
corner; that the miracles (though actual occurrences) were not wrought by 
divine power; that Jesus was not divine, and did not rise from the dead; that 
Christianity is an evolution. He took the same view as Renan, Strauss 
and modern " Rationalists," charging the supposed appearance of Jesus 
after his crucifixion to the imaginings of " a distracted woman," or to the 
delusions of those who fancied what they desired to see. 

Celsus sometimes selected the views of unauthorized Christians, as 
when he charged that they worshiped Christ as God. Origen's reply 
proves that Christ was held to be divine, but not Deity. He says: "Granted 
that there may be some individuals among the multitude of believers who 
are not in entire agreement with us, and who incautiously assert that the 
Savior is the most High God; we do not hold with them, but rather believe 
him when he says: "The Father who sent me is greater than I." Had 
Christians then held Christ to be God, he could not have said this. 

Celsus was the father of " Rationalism," and Origen the exponent of a 
reverent and rational Christian belief. 



XI. 

ORIGEN— CONTINUED. 

The students, biographers and critics of Origen of 
all schools of thought and theology mainly agree 
in representing him as an explicit promulgator of 
Universalism. Canon Westcott styles him the 
great corrector of that Africanism which since Au- 
gustine has dominated Western theology. He thus 
defines his views: "All future punishments exactly 
answer to individual sinfulness, and, like punish- 
ments on earth, they are directed to the amendment 
of the sufferers. Lighter offenses can be chastised 
on earth; the heavier remain to be visited hereafter. 
In every case the uttermost farthing must be paid, 
though final deliverance is promised. " 

Blunt, in his excellent work, describes the 
heathen admixtures and corruptions in manner, cus- 
tom, habit, conduct and life that be- 

Blunt on Origen. 2 an to P revail durin 2 the latter P art 
of the Third Century, as the influ- 
ence of the great Alexandrine fathers 
waned, and the Latinizing of the church began to as- 
sert itself. l 

1 * There will come a time when man, completely 
subjected to Christ by the operation of the Holy 
Ghost," says Bigg, epitomizing Origen, ' 'shall in 
Christ be completely subjected to the Father. But 

Copious references have already been made on this point. 
I6 5 



166 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES, 

now," he adds, "the end is always like the begin- 
ning. The manifold diversity of the 
Dr. Bigg on world is to close in unity, it must then 

Origen. have sprung from unity. His expan- 

sion of this theory is in fact an elab- 
orate commentary upon the eighth chapter of the 
Epistle to the Romans and the fifteenth chapter of 
the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Those, he felt, 
were the two keys, the one to the eternity before, 
the other to the eternity after. What the church 
cannot pardon, God may. The sin which has no for- 
giveness in this aeon or the aeon to come, may be 
atoned for in some one of the countless aeons of the 
vast hereafter. " This exegesis serves to show us 
how the primitive church treated the "unpardonable 
sin." (Matt, xii: 32.) The sin against the Holy 
Ghost "shall not be forgiven in this world (aion, age) 
nor in the world (aion, age) to come." According 
to Origen, it may be in "some one of the countless 
aeons of the vast hereafter." 

The historian Schaff concedes that among those 
quickened and inspired to follow Origen were 
Pamphilus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Didymus of All 
exandria, Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory .of 
Nazianzum, and Gregory of Nyssa; and among the 
Latin fathers, Hilary and Jerome. And he feels 
obliged to add : ' ' Gregory of Nyssa and perhaps 
also Didymus, even adhered to Origen's doctrine of 
the final salvation of all created intelligences." 2 



2 " The theology of Christendom and its character for the first three 
centuries was shaped by three men. Ignatius, Irenaeus and Cyprian gave its 
organization; Clement and Origen its form of religious thought." British 
Quarterly Review, 1879. 



ORIGEN— CONTINUED. 167 

Bunsen declares that Origen adduces in "De 
Principiis, " in favor of "the universality of final sal- 
vation," the arguments of "nearly all 
Bunsen on the ' 'Ante - Nicene fathers before 

Origen. him." And Bunsen proceeds to show- 

that the conviction that so broad a 
faith would not enable hierarchs to control the peo- 
ple, inclined his opponents to resort to the terrors 
of an indefinite, and thus, to their apprehension, infi- 
nite and eternal punishment, which has vengeance 
and not amendment for its end. "Away with Ori- 
gen ! What is to become of virtue, and heaven, and 
— clerical power, if the fear of eternal punishment is 
not forever kept before men's eyes as the prop of hu- 
man and divine authority?" So thought Demetrius, 
Bishop of Alexandria in 230. Bunsen adds that Or- 
igen taught that " the soul, having a substance and 
life of her own, will receive her reward, according 
to her merits, either obtaining the inheritance of 
eternal life and blessedness, or being delivered over 
to eternal death and torments," after which comes 
the resurrection, the anastaszs, the rising into incor- 
ruption and glory, when ' ' finally at the end of time, 
God will be all in all ; not by the destruction of the 
creature, but by its gradual elevation into his divine 
being. This is life eternal, according to Christ's own 
teaching." Of the grand faith in universal redemp- 
tion, Prof. Plumptre says: "It has been, and is, 
the creed of the great poets whom we accept as the 
spokesmen of a nation's thoughts. " 3 

3 Spirits in Prison, p. 13. Dr. Ballou in his Ancient History of Universal- 
ism, p. 95, note, gives at length references to the passages in Delarue's edi- 
tion of Origen in which the doctrine of universal salvation is expressed in 
Origen's own words. 



168 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

The treatment experienced by Origen is one of 
the anomalies of history. The first hostility to him, 

followed by his deposition and ex- 
Origen Cruelly communication, A. D. 232, is con- 
Treated, ceded to have been in consequence 

of his opposition to the Episcopal 
tendencies of Bishop Demetrius, and the envy of 
the bishop. His Universalism was not in question. 
Lardner says that he was "not expelled from Alex- 
andria for heresy, but for envy." Bunsen says: 
"Demetrius induced a numerous synod of Egyptian 
bishops to condemn as heretical * * * Origen's 
opinion respecting the universality of final salva- 
tion. " But Bunsen seems to contradict his own 
words by adding : ' 'This opinion he had certainly 
stated so as even to hold out a prospect of the con- 
version of Satan himself by the irresistible power 
of the love of the Almighty," but he was condemned 
" mot,' as says St. Jerome, who was no friend to his 
theology, 'on account of novelty of doctrine — not for 
heresy — but because they could not bear the glory 
of his learning and eloquence.'" The opposition to 
Origen seems to have begun in the petty anger of 
Demetrius, who was incensed because Origen, a 
layman, delivered discourses in the presence of bish- 
ops (Alexander and Theoctistus), though at their 
request, and because he was ordained out of his dio- 
cese. Demetrius continued his persecutions until 
he had degraded Origen from the office of presby- 
ter, though all the ecclesiastical authorities in Pales- 
tine refused to recognize the validity of the sentence. 
His excommunication, however, was disregarded by 
the bishops of Palestine, Arabia and Greece. Going 



ORipEN— CONTINUED. 169 

from Alexandria to Greece and Palestine, Origen 
was befriended by Bishop Firmilian in Cappadocia 
for two years ; and was also welcomed in Nicomedia 
and Athens. 4 

Huet says: "Everyone, with hardly an excep- 
tion, adhered to Origen. " And Doucin : ' ' Provided 
one had Origen on his side, he believed himself cer- 
tain to have the truth. " 

Origen's Theology Generally Accepted. 

That his opinions were not obnoxious is proved 
by the fact that most of his friends and followers 
were placed in charge of the most important 
churches. Says De Pressense: "The Eastern 
church of the Third Century cancelled, in fact, the 
sentence passed upon Origen under the influence of 
the hierarchical party. At Alexandria itself his dis- 
ciples maintained the pre-eminence, and at the death 
of Demetrius, Heraclas, who had been the most in- 
timate friend and trusted disciple of Origen, was 
raised to the Episcopal dignity by the free choice of 
the elders. * * * Heraclas died A. D. 249 and 
was succeeded by another disciple of Origen, * * * 
Dionysius of Alexandria. * * * He was an as- 
siduous disciple of Origen, and with his death the 
halcyon days of the school of Alexandria were now 
over. Dionysius was the last of its great masters." 
It is to be deplored that none of the writings of 
Dionysius are known to exist. 

Theophylact, Bishop of Caesarea, expressed the 
most ardent friendship for Origen, and offered him 

4 De Pressense charges the acrimony of Demetrius to Origen's opposi- 
sition to the encroachments of the Episcopate and to his disapproval of the 
ambition of the hierarchy. Martyrs and Apologists, p. 332. 



170 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

a refuge in Caesarea, and a position as teacher. Fir- 
milian, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, received 
Origen during Maximin's persecution, and was al- 
ways a fast friend. The majority of the Palestinian 
bishops were friendly. Jerome mentions Trypho as 
a disciple of Origen. He was author of several com- 
mentaries on the Old Testament. Hippolytus is 
spoken of as "a disciple of Origen and Dionysius of 
Alexandria, ' the Origen of the West' " * * * 
attracted to Origen " by all the affinities of heart and 
mind. " 

The state of opinion on the subject of universal 
salvation is shown by the fact that though Ignatius, 

IrenjEUS, Hippolytus and others 
His Universalism wrote against the prevalent heresies 
Never Condemned, of their times, Universalism is never 

named as among them. Some of the 
alleged errors of Origen were condemned, but his doc- 
trine of universal salvation, never. Methodius, who 
wrote A. D. 300; PAMPHiLusand Eusebius, A. D. 310; 
Eustathius, A.D. 380; Epiphanius, A. D. 3 76 and 394; 
Theophilus, A. D. 400-404, and Jerome, A. D. 400; 
all give lists of Origen's errors, but none name his 
Universalism among them. Besides, some of those 
who condemned his errors were Universalists, as the 
school of Antioch. And many who were opponents 
of Origenism were mentioned by Origen's enemies 
with honor notwithstanding they were Universalists, 
as Clement of Alexandria, and Gregory of Nyssa. 
Pamphilus and Eusebius, A. D. 307-310, jointly 
wrote an Apology for Origen that contained declara- 
tions from the ancient fathers endorsing his views of 
the Restitution. This work, had it survived, would 



ORIGEN— CONTINUED. 171 

undoubtedly be an invaluable repository of evidence 
to show the general prevalence of his views on the 
part of those whose writings have not been preserved. 
All Christians must lament with Lardner the loss 
of a work that would have told us so much of the 
great Alexandrian. It seems to have been the fash- 
ion with the ancient Latin theologians to burn the 
books they could not refute. 

Farrar names the eminent ancients who men- 
tion Origen with greatest honor and respect. Some, 
like Augustine, do not accept his views, but all 
utter eulogistic words, many adopt his sentiments, 
and Eusebius added a sixth book to the production of 
Pamphilus, in consequence of the detractions against 
Origen. While he had his opponents and defamers, 
the best and the most of his contemporaries and im- 
mediate successors either accepted his doctrines or 
eulogized his goodness and greatness. 

Origen bitterly lamented the misrepresentation 
of his views even during his lifetime. How much 
more might he have said could he have foreseen what 
would be said of him after his death. 

Pamphilus, who was martyred A. D. 294, and 
Eusebius, in their lost Apology for Origen, which is 
mentioned by at least two writers who had seen it, 
gave many testimonies of fathers preceding Origen, 
favoring Universalism, 5 and D omit i an, Bishop of 
Ancyra, complains that those who condemn the res- 
torationism of Origen ''anathematize all those saints 
who preceded and followed him," implying the gen- 

6 Routh, Reliquiae Sacrae, iii, p. 498. 



172 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

eral prevalence of Universalism before and after the 
days of rig en. 

Among the celebrated contemporaries and imme- 
diate successors of Origen whose writings on the 

question of man's final destiny do not 
Origen's survive, but who, from the relations 

Contemporaries. they sustained to this greatest of the 

Fathers, must have sympathized with 
his belief in universal restoration, may be mentioned 
Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem (A. D. 216), a fel- 
low student; Theoctistus, Bishop of Caesarea (A. D. 
240-260); Heraclas, Bishop of Alexandria (A. D. 
200-248); Ambrose (A. D. 200-230); Firmilian, 
Bishop of Caesarea (A. D. 200-270); Athenodore, 
his brother (A. D. 210-270); all friends and adher- 
ents of Origen. They must have cherished what 
was at the time the prevalent sentiment among 
Oriental Christians — a belief in universal restoration 
— though we have no testimonies from them. 

On the unsupported statement of Jerome, Origen 
is declared to have protested his orthodoxy to the 
reigning Pope, Fabian, A. D. 246, and solicited re-ad- 
mission to the communion of the church. He is said 
to have laid the blame of the publication of 
some of his heterodox sentiments to the haste 
of his friend Ambrose. But as Origen continued 
to teach Universalism all the rest of his life the 
statement of Jerome must be rejected, or universal 
restoration was not among the heterodox doctrines. 
At the time Origen is said to have written the letter, 
his pupil and friend, Dionysius, was Patriarch of 
Alexandria, and he wrote to Pope Fabian and other 
bishops, it is probable, to effect a reconciliation, to 



ORIGEN— CONTINUED. 173 

which Dionysius and most of the bishops would be 
favorable. Besides, Origen is on record as classing 
all bishops as of equal eminence, except as goodness 
gave them superior rank, so that he could not have 
regarded Fabian as pope. That the general senti- 
ment during Origen's times and for some time after 
was universalistic is thus made apparent. 6 
Ancient Universalist Schools. 
Dr. Beecher says: "Two great facts stand out 
on the page of ecclesiastical history. One, that the 
first system of Christian theology was 
Dr. Beecher's composed and issued by Origen in the 

Testimony. year 230 after Christ, of which a fun- 

damental and essential element was 
the doctrine of the universal restoration of all fallen 
beings to their original holiness and union with God. 
The second is, that after the lapse of a little more 
than three centuries, in the year 544, this doctrine 
was for the first time condemned and anathematized 
as heretical. * * * From and after this point 
(A. D. 553) the doctrine of eternal punishment 
reigned with undisputed sway during the Middle 
Ages that preceded the Reformation. * * * What, 
then, was the state of facts as to the leading theo- 
logical schools of the Christian world, in the age of 
Origen, and some centuries after? It was in brief 
this : There were at least six theological schools in 
the church at large. Of these six schools, one, and 

6 " At the close of the Second Century the church in Alexandria was 
wealthy and numerous . Demetrius, the bishop , gave the finishing stroke to 
the Congregationalism of the church by censuring Origen and by appoint- 
ing suffragan bishops whom he persuaded to pass a sentence upon Origen 
which the presbyters had refused to sanction." Redepenning, as quoted 
by Bigg. 



174 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

only one, was decidedly and earnestly in favor of the 
doctrine of future eternal punishment. One was in 
favor of the annihilation of the wicked, two were in 
favor of the doctrine of universal restoration on the 
principles of Origen, and two in favor of universal 
restoration on the principles of Theodore of Mopsu- 
estia. It is also true that the prominent defenders 
of the doctrine of universal restoration were decided 
believers in the divinity of Christ, in the Trinity, in 
the incarnation and atonement, and in the great 
Christian doctrine of regeneration ; and were in piety, 
devotion, Christian activity, and missionary enter- 
prise, as well as in learning and intellectual power 
and attainments, inferior to none in the best ages of 
the church, and were greatly superior to those by 
whom, in after ages, they were condemned and anath- 
ematized. From two theological schools there 
went forth an opposition to the doctrine of eternal 
punishment, which had its ground in a deeper Chris- 
tian interest ; inasmuch as the doctrine of a universal 
restoration was closely connected with the entire 
dogmatic systems of both these schools, namely that 
of Origen (Alexandrian) , and the school of Antioch. " 
" Three at least of the greatest of the ancient schools 
of Christian theology — the schools of Alexandria, 
Antioch and Csesarea — leaned on this subject to the 
views of Origen, not in their details, but in their 
general hopefulness. * * * The fact that even 
these Origenistic fathers were able, with perfect 
honesty, to use the current phraseology, shows that 
such phraseology was at least capable of a different 
interpretation from that (now) commonly put upon 
it. " The school in Northern Africa favored the doc- 



ORIGEN— CONTINUED. 175 

trine of endless punishment ; that in Asia Minor an- 
nihilation. The two in Alexandria and Caesar ea were 
Universalistic of the school of Origen ; those at Anti- 
och and Edessa were Universalistic of the school of 
Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodore of Tarsus. 
"Decidedly the most powerful minds (300 to 400 
A. D.) adopted the doctrine of universal restoration, 
and those who did not adopt it entered into no contro- 
versy about it with those who did. In the African 
school all this was reversed. From the very begin- 
ning they took strong ground in favor of the doctrine 
of eternal punishment, as an essential part of a great 
system of law of which God was the center." 7 

It should be noted, however, that the schools in 
Asia Minor and Northern Africa, where annihilation 
and endless punishment were taught, were not 
strictly divinity schools, but mere seminaries. 

The one school out of the six in Christendom that 
taught endless punishment was in Africa, and the 
doctrine was derived by Latins from misunderstand- 
ing a foreign language, through mis-translations of 
the original Greek Scriptures, and was obtained by 
infusing the virus of Roman secularism into the 
simplicity of Christianity. Maine in his "Ancient 
Law" attributes the difference between Eastern and 
Western theology to this cause. The student of 
primitive Christianity will see that Tertullian, 
Cyprian, Minucius Felix, down to Augustine, were 
influenced by these causes, and created the theolog 
cal travesty that ruled the Christian world for dark 
and sorrowful centuries. 

*Hist. Doct. Fut. Ret. 



176 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

On this point (that Origen's views were general) 
Neale observes: "In reading the works of Origen, 
we are not to consider his tenets and opinions as those 
of one isolated doctor; — they are rather an embodi- 
ment of the doctrines handed down in the Catechet- 
ical school of Alexandria. And this school was the 
type, or model, according to which the mind of the 
Alexandrine church was cast; the philosophy of 
Pantaenus descended to Clemens, — and from him it 
was caught by Origen." 8 

From these facts it is easily seen that the here- 
sies of which Origen was accused did not touch the 
doctrine of universal restoration. 
Origen Misrep- They were for teaching inequality 
resented. between the persons of the Trinity, 

the pre-existence of the human soul, 
denying the resurrection of the body, affirming 
that wicked angels will not suffer endless punish- 
ment, and that all souls will be absorbed into the 
Infinite Fountain whence they sprang, like drops 
falling into the sea. This latter accusation was a 
perversion of his teaching that God will be ' 'all in 
all." Some of these doctrines are only found in 
alleged quotations in the works of his opponents, as 
Jerome and others who wrote against him. His 
language was sometimes misunderstood, and oftener 
ignorantly or purposely perverted. Many quota- 
tions are from works of his not in existence. Inter- 
polations and alterations were made by his enemies 
in his works even during his lifetime, as he com- 
plained. Epiphanius "attacked Origen in Jerusa- 

8 Holv Eastern Church, p. 37. 



ORIGEN— CONTINUED. 177 

lem after lie was dead, and tried to make Bishop 
John denounce him. Failing here he tried to com- 
pel Jerome, through fear for his reputation for or- 
thodoxy, to do the same, and succeeded so far as to 
disgrace Jerome forever for his meanness, and cow- 
ardice, and double dealing. Then Theophilus, 
Bishop of Alexandria, came to his aid in anathema- 
tizing Origen. He called a synod A. D. 399, in 
which he condemned Origen and anathematized all 
who should read his works. " ' 'After this, Epipha- 
nius died. But his followers pursued the same work 
in his spirit, until Origen was condemned again by 
Justinian;" this time for his Universalism, but, as 
will be seen hereafter, the church did not sustain 
Justinian's attack. 9 

The reprehensible practices to which the odium 
theologicum has impelled good men, is illustrated by 
Dr. Enoch Pond, professor in Ban- 
Dr. Pond's Mis- gor Theological Seminary. Dis- 
represen a ion pleased with the wonderfully candid 

statements of Dr. Edward Beecher, 
in his articles in "The Christian Union," afterwards 
containedin " History of the Doctrine of Future Ret- 
ribution, " he reviewed the articles in the same paper, 
and in order to convict Dr. Beecher of inaccuracy, Dr. 
Pond quotes from Crombie's translation of Rufinus's 
Latin version instead of from Crombie's rendering of 
the actual Greek of Origen, and this, too, when not 
only does Rufinus confess that he has altered the 
sense but in the very book (III) from which Dr. Pond 



9 Socrates, the ecclesiastical historian, defends Origen from the attacks 
of his enemies, and finding him sound on the co-eternity of Christ with God, 
will not hear of any heresy in him. Eccl. Hist., b. vi, ch. xiii. 



178 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

quotes is Crombie's translation of the Greek, and the 
following- note from Crombie is at the beginning of 
the chapter: " The whole of this chapter has been 
preserved in the original Greek, which is literally 
translated in corresponding portions on each page, so 
that the differences between Origen's own words and 
the amplifications and alterations of the paraphrase 
of Rufinus may be at once patent to the reader." It 
almost seems that there is a fatality attendant upon 
all hostile critics who deal with Origen. The injus- 
tice he received in life seems to have dogged his 
name in every age. 

The manner in which theological questions were 
settled and creeds established in those days, is shown 
by Athanasius. He says that when the Emperor 
Constantius at the council of Milan, A. D. 355, com- 
manded the bishops to subscribe against Athanasius 
and they replied that there was no ecclesiastical 
canon to that effect, the Emperor said, ' ' Whatever I 
will, let that be esteemed a canon. " 

A. D. 402, when Epiphanius came from Cyprus 
to Constantinople with a synodical decree condemn- 
ing Origen's books without excom- 
Universalism in ... ~ , ■, v -, 

^ , „ , municatmg Origen, he declined 

Good Repute in , . . . ., ., 

the Fifth Century. Chrysostom s invitation to lodge at 
the Episcopal palace, as Chrysostom 
was a friend and advocate of Origen. He urged the 
clergy of the city to sign the decree, but, Socrates 
says, "many refused, among them Theotinus, Bishop 
of Scythia, who said, ' I choose not, Epiphanius, to 
insult the memory of one who ended his life piously 
long ago; nor dare I be guilty of so impious an act, 
as that of condemning what our predecessors by no 



ORIGEN-CONTINUED. 179 

means rejected; and especially when I know of no 
evil doctrine contained in Origen's books. * * * 
Those who attempt to fix a stigma on these writings 
are unconsciously casting a dishonor upon the sacred 
volume whence their principles are drawn.' Such 
was the reply which Theotinus, a prelate, eminent 
for his piety and rectitude of life, made to Epipha- 
nius." In the next chapter (xiii), Socrates states 
that only worthless characters decried Origen. 
Among them he mentions Methodius, Eustathius, 
Apollinaris and Theophilus, as "four revilers," 
whose " censure was his 'Commendation." Socrates 
was born about A. D. 380, and his book continues 
Eusebius's history to A. D. 445, and he records what 
he received from those who knew the facts. This 
makes it clear that while Origen's views were re- 
jected by some, they were in good repute by the 
most and the best, two hundred years after his 
death. 

Even Augustine admits that "some, nay, very 
many" {nonnulli, quam plurimi), pity with human 
feeling, the everlasting punishment of the damned, 
and do not believe that it is so. " 10 The kind of peo- 
ple thus believing are described by Dcederlein, 
1 ' The more highly distinguished in Christian antiq- 
uity any one was for learning, so much the more did 
he cherish and defend the hope of future torments 
sometime ending. " 

Previous to A. D. 200 three different opinions 
were held among Christians — endless punishment, 
annihilation, and universal salvation ; but, so far as 

"Enchirid. ch. 112. 



180 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

the literature of the times shows, the subject was 
never one of controversy, and the 
Different Opinions last-named doctrine prevailed most, 
on Human Destiny, if the assertions of it in literature 
are any test of its acceptance by the 
people. For a hundred and fifty years, A. D. 250 to 
400, though Origen and his heresies on many points 
are frequently attacked and condemned, there is 
scarcely a whisper on record against his Universal- 
ism. On the other hand, to be called an Origenist 
was a high honor, from 260 to 290. A. D 300 on, 
the doctrine of endless punishment began to be more 
explicitly stated, notably by Arnobius and Lactan- 
tius. And thenceforward to 370, while some of the 
fathers taught endless punishment, and others anni- 
hilation, the doctrine of most is not stated. One 
fact, however, is conspicuous: though all kinds of 
heresy were attacked, Universalism was not consid- 
ered sufficiently heretical to entitle it to censure. u 



"According to Reuss "The doctrine of a general restoration of all ra- 
tional creatures has been recommended by very many of the greatest think- 
ers of the ancient church and of modern times." 



XII. 

THE EULOGISTS OF ORIGEN. 

This chief Universalist of the centuries imme- 
diately succeeding the apostles was, by general con- 
sent, the most erudite and saintly of all the Christian 
fathers. Historians, scholars, critics, men of all 
shades of thought and opinion emulate one another 
in exalting his name, and praising his character. 
This volume could be filled with their eulogiums. 
Says one of the most judicious historians: "If any 
man deserves to stand first in the catalogue of saints 
and martyrs, and to be annually held up as an exam- 
ple to Christians, this is the man, for except the 
apostles of Jesus Christ, and their companions, I 
know of no one among all those enrolled and honored 
as saints who excel him in virtue and holiness. " * A 
discriminating critic declares: "His work upon the 
text of Scripture alone would entitle Origen to undy- 
ing gratitude. There has been no truly great man 
in the church who did not love him a little." 2 Bun- 
sen remarks: " Origen's death is the real end of free 
Christianity, and in particular, of free intellectual 
theology." 3 

The learned author of "The Martyrs and Apolo- 

1 Mosheim, Hist. Com. in Christ, before Constantine, ii, p. 149. 
2Christ. Plat, of Alex., p. 303. 
3 Hipp. and his Age, pp. 285, 286. 

I8l 



182 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

gists" truthfully observes: " Origen never swerved 
from this Christian magnanimity, and 
The Tributes he remains the model of the theo- 

of Scholars. logian persecuted by haughty big- 

otry. Gentle as Fenelon under hier- 
archical anathemas, he maintained his convictions 
without faltering, and neither retracted nor rebelled. 
We may well say with the candid Tillemont that al- 
though such a man might hold heretical opinions he 
could not be a heretic, since he was utterly free from 
that spirit which constitutes the guilt of heresy." 4 
Canon Westcott writes : ' ' He examines with a rev- 
erence, an insight, a grandeur of feeling never sur- 
passed, the questions of the inspiration and the 
interpretation of the Bible. The intellectual value 
of the work may best be characterized by one 
fact: a single sentence taken from it was quoted 
by Butler as containing the germ of his 'Anal- 
ogy.' After sixteen hundred years we have not 
yet made good the positions which he marked out 
as belonging to the domain of Christian philoso- 
phy. * * * His whole life was 'one unbroken 
prayer ' to use his own language of what an ideal life 
should be. " 5 The sober historian Lardner records 
only a candid appreciation of the man when he says : 
"He had the happiness of uniting different accom- 
plishments, being at once the greatest preacher and 
the most learned and voluminous writer of the age ; 
nor is it easy to say which is most admirable, his 
learning or his virtue." 6 Plumptre vies with Ori- 



*Bunsen, pp. 326, 327. 

6 Essays, pp. 236-252. 

«Cred. Gos. Hist.. Vol. II. p. 486. 



THE EULOGISTS OF ORIGEN. 183 

gen's other eulogists, and Farrar in all his remark- 
able books can never say enough in his praise. A 
brief extract from him will suffice: "The greatest 
of all the fathers, the most apostolic man since the 
days of the apostles, the father who on every branch 
of study rendered to the church the deepest and 
widest services — the immortal Origen. * * * 
The first writer, the profoundest thinker, the great- 
est educator, the most laborious critic, the most hon- 
ored preacher, the holiest confessor of his age. We 
know of no man in the whole Christian era, except 
St. Paul, who labored so incessantly, and rendered 
to the church such inestimable services. We know 
of no man, except St. Paul, who had to suffer from 
such black and bitter ingratitude. He, the con- 
verter of the heathen, the strengthener of the mar- 
tyrs, the profoundest of Christian teachers, the 
greatest and most learned of the interpreters of 
Scripture — he to whom kings and bishops and phi- 
losophers had been proud to listen — he who had re- 
futed the ablest of all the assailants of Christianity 
— he who had founded the first school of Biblical 
exegesis and Biblical philology — he who had done 
more for the honor and the knowledge of the Ora- 
cles of God not only than all his assailants (for that 
is not saying much), but than all the then bishops 
and writers of the church put together — he who had 
known the Scriptures from infancy, who had vainly 
tried to grasp in boyhood the crown of martyrdom, 
who had been the honored teacher of saints, who 
had been all his life long a confessor — he in the very 
errors of whose life was more of nobleness than in 
the whole lives of his assailants, — who had lived a 



184 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

life more apostolic, who did more and suffered more 
for the truth of Christ than any man after the first 
century of our era, and whose accurately measurable 
services stand all but unapproachable by all the cen- 
turies — I, for one, will never mention the name of 
Origen without the love, and the admiration, and 
the reverence due to one of the greatest and one of 
the best of the saints of God. " 

Even modern Catholics — in spite of the ban of 
pope and council — join the great army of Origen's eu- 
logists. Says the ' 'Catholic World :" 

''Alexandria, the cradle of Eastern genius at that 
time, became the Christian Thermopylae, and Origen 
the Christian Leonidas. It was he 
A Catholic who headed the forces, and, by the 

Eulogy. splendor of his genius, prepared in 

his school illustrious men to lead on 
the van. He vindicated the truth from calumny, 
supported, it by facts, disengaged it from the soph- 
isms in which enemies had obscured it, and held it up 
to view in all its natural beauty and attraction. * * 
Heathens were delighted with his language, full of 
unction and charm, and the literati of the age, who 
had been lost in the intricacies of Aristotle, the ob- 
scurities of Plato, and the absurdities of Epicurus, 
wondered at the young Christian philosopher. " 7 

Referring to the hard words that most advocates 
of universal redemption who are past middle life 
have received, Rev. Edward Beecher, D. D., de- 
clares, in his "History of the Doctrine of Future Retri- 
bution:" "An evil spirit was developed at that time 

'April, 1874. 



THE EULOGISTS OF ORIGEN. 185 

in putting down Origen which has ever since poi- 
soned the church of all denominations. It has been as 
a leprosy in all Christendom. Nor is this all : meas- 
ures were then resorted to for the suppression of 
error which exerted a deadly hostility against all 
free investigation, from the influence of which the 
church universal has not yet recovered. " 

The Encyclopedia Britannica, article Origen, 
(Prof. Adolf Harnack), voices the conclusions of the 
scholarly world: 

"Of all the theologians of the ancient church, 
with the possible exception of Augustine, Origen is 
the most distinguished and the most influential. He 
is the father of the church's science ; he is the founder 
of a theology which was brought to perfection in the 
Fourth and Fifth Centuries, and which still retained 
the stamp of his genius when in the Sixth Century 
it disowned its author. It was Origen who created 
the dogmatic of the church and laid the foundations 
of the scientific criticism of the Old and New Testa- 
ments. He could not have been what he was unless 
two generations before him had labored at the prob- 
lem of finding an intellectual expression and a philo- 
sophic basis for Christianity: (Justin, Tatian, Athe- 
nagoras, Pantaenus, Clement.) But their attempts, 
in comparison with his, are like a schoolboy's 
essays beside the finished work of a master. 
* * * By proclaiming the reconciliation of 
science with the Christian faith, of the high- 
est culture with the Gospel, Origen did more 
than any other man to win the Old World to 
the Christian religion. But he entered into no 
diplomatic compromises ; it was his deepest and most 



1 86 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

solemn conviction that the sacred oracles of Christen- 
dom embraced all the ideals of antiquity. His char- 
acter was as transparent as his life was blameless ; 
there are few church fathers whose biography leaves 
so pure an impression on the reader. The atmos- 
phere around him was a dangerous one for a philoso- 
pher and theologian to breathe, but he kept his spir- 
itual health unimpaired and even his sense of truth 
suffered less injury than was the case with most of 
his contemporaries. * * * Orthodox theology 
has never, in any of the confessions, ventured beyond 
the circle which the mind of Origen first measured 
out" 

. We conclude these eulogies, which might be mul- 
tiplied indefinitely, by giving the high authority of 
Max Muller: " Origen was as hon- 

U^eL^stsT/eal est aS a Christian as he was as a P hi " 
Christians. losopher, and it was this honesty 

which made Christianity victorious in 
the Third Century, and will make it victorious again 
whenever it finds supporters who are determined not 
to sacrifice their philosophical convictions to their re- 
ligious faith or their religious faith to their philo- 
sophical convictions. * * * If we consider the 
time in which he lived, and study the testimony 
which his contemporaries bore of his character, we 
may well say of him, as of others who have been mis- 
judged by posterity: 

4 Denn wer den Besten seiner Zeit genug gelebt, 
Der hat genug gelebt f iir alle Zeiten.' " 8 

If any man since the death of Paul should rank 



«Theos. or Psych. Rel. Lect. XIH. 



THE EULOGISTS OF ORIGEN. 187 

as the patron saint of the Universalist church, it is 
the greatest and best of all the ancient fathers, Ori- 

GEN ADAMANTIUS. 

Note.— It has been asserted that Origen did not actually teach the ulti- 
mate salvation of all souls, because he insisted that the human will is eter- 
nally free, and therefore it is argued that he must have held that souls may 
repent and be saved, and sin and fall forever. But this is not true, for Ori- 
gen taught that at some period in the future, love and holiness will be so 
absorbed by all souls that, though, theoretically, they will be free, they will 
so will that lapse will be impossible. Jerome, Justinian, Dr. Pond, and 
others are explicitly confuted by the great scholar and saint. In hi3 com- 
ments on Romans vi: 9, 10, he says: " The apostle decides, by an absolute 
decision, that now Christ dies no more, in order that those who live together 
with him may be secure of the endlessness of their life. * * * Free-will 
indeed remains, but the power of the cross suffices for all orders, and all 
ages, past and to come. And that free-will will not lead to sin, is plain, be- 
cause love never faileth, and when God is loved with all the heart, and soul, 
and mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves, where is the place 
for sin?" In his great work " De Principiis," he declares: " The nature of 
this body of ours will be changed into the glory of a spiritual body, in which 
state we are to believe that it will remain always and immutably by the will 
of the Creator," etc. Though Origen insisted that the human will must 
forever be free, he did not admit that the soul could abuse its freedom 
by continuing forever to lapse into sin. 



XIII. 

A THIRD CENTURY GROUP. 

While we mourn that so little of the literature of 
the early days of our religion remains, the wonder is 
that we have so much, rather than so little. The 
persecutions of Decius and Diocletian — especially 
of the latter — were most unrelenting towards Chris- 
tian books. 1 " The volumes which escaped from the 
perils of those days were like brands snatched from 
the fire." "A little dust — precious, indeed, as gold — 
in a few sepulchral urns, is all that now remains. " 
And later, the burning of the Alexandrine library by 
the Arabs, the destructive persecutions of heretics, 
the ban of council, and the curse of pope and priest, 
in the church's long eclipse, destroyed innumerable 
volumes, so that there is ample reason to believe 
that, could we inspect all that Clement, Origen and 
others wrote, in the original Greek, untampered 
with, we should have pages where we now have sen- 
tences avowing Universalism. Occasionally an an- 
cient volume is yet found, accidentally buried, as 
was the Philosophumena of Hippolytus, formerly 
attributed to Origen, discovered by a learned Greek 
in a monastery on Mount Athos, in the year 1842. 
Of the ten books contained in the volume, the sec- 

iWordsworth's St. Hippolytus and the Church of Rome, p. 144. 

188 



A THIRD CENTURY GROUP. 189 

ond, the third, and the beginning of the fourth are 
gone. 

Hippolytus. 

Hippolytus (about A. D. 220) enumerates and 
comments on thirty- two heresies, but universal res- 
toration is not named among them. 2 And yet, Cle- 
ment of Alexandria, and Origen — then living — were 
everywhere regarded as the great teachers' of the 
church, and their view of man's future destiny was 
generally prevalent, according to Augustine, Jerome 
and others. It could not then have been regarded 
as a " heresy " or Hippolytus would have named it. 
What a force there is in the fact that not one of those 
who wrote against the heresies of their times ever 
name universal salvation as one of them! Hippoly- 
tus mentions thirty-two. Epiphanius wrote his 
Panarion and epitomized it in his Anacephalaeosis 
or Recapitulation, but not one of the heresy-hunters 
includes our faith in his maledictions. Can there be 
stronger evidence than this fact that the doctrine was 
not then heretical? 

It is curious to notice how the mind of a theolo- 
gian can be prejudiced. Dean Wordsworth in his 
translation of Hippolytus gives the 
Dean Words- language of that contemporary of 

worth's Error. Origen, to show that the former had 
no sympathy with the broad faith of 
the latter. He quotes Hippolytus thus: "The 
coming malediction of the judgment of fire, and the 
dark and rayless aspect of tartarus, not irradiated by 

sphilosophuniena or Refutation of Heresy. 



igo UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

the voice of the Word, and the surge of the ever- 
flowing lake, generating fire, and the eye of tarta- 
rean avenging angels ever fixed in malediction," etc. 
The Dean unwarrantably, because inaccurately, 
translates kolaston "avenging," a meaning it does 
not possess. It is rendered punish, chastise, correct, 
but never carries the sense of revenge. Further- 
more, disregarding the fact that the acknowledged 
Universalist fathers denounce the sinner with words 
as intense as is the above language, which may be 
literally fulfilled and yet restoration ensue beyond it 
all, the Dean renders the very next paragraph thus : 
"You will have your body immortal (dOdvaTov) 
and incorruptible (a<f>6apTov) , together with your 
soul " (if/vyr}, life). Now had Hippolytus intended 
to teach the absolutely interminable duration of the 
"tartarean fire," would he not have used these 
stronger terms, aphtharton and athanaton, which are 
never employed in the New Testament to teach lim- 
ited duration, and is not the fact that he used the 
weaker word to describe punishment, evidence that 
he did not in this passage in the "Philosophumena" 
intend to teach the sinner's endless torment? 

Not less surprising is the language of Dean 
Wordsworth, and his misreading of the facts of his- 
tory, when he comments on the harsh and bitter 
tone of Hippolytus, in his treatment of heretics, in 
the "Philosophumena." Contrasting the acrid temper 
of Hippolytus with the sweetness of Origen, Dean 
Wordsworth says: 

"The opinion of Origen with regard to future 
punishments is well known. The same feelings 
which induced him to palliate the errors of heretics, 



A THIRD CENTURY GROUP. 191 

beguiled him into exercising his ingenuity in tam- 
pering with the declarations of Scripture concerning 
the eternal duration of the future punishment of sin. 
Thus false charity betrayed him into heresy." 8 

This is a sad reversal of cause and effect. Why 
not say that the sublime fact of God's goodness re- 
sulting in universal salvation, created in Origen 's 
heart that generous charity and divine sweetness that 
caused him to look with pity rather than with anger 
on human error, in imitation of the God he wor- 
shiped? 

Theophilus. 
Theophilus of Antioch, who wrote about A. D. 
180, and was bishop of Antioch, speaks of aionian 
torments, and aionian fire, but he must have used 
the terms as did Origen and the other ancient Uni- 
versalists, for he says: "For just as a vessel which, 
after it has been made, has some flaw, is remade or 
remolded, that it may become new and bright, so it 
comes to man by death. For in some way or other 
he is broken up, that he may come forth in the res- 
urrection whole, I mean spotless, and righteous, and 
immortal." 4 

Tertullian. 

Tertullian (Quintus Septimius Florens Tertul- 
lianus) was born in Carthage, Africa, about A. D. 
160, and died A. D. 220. He had a fine Pagan edu- 
cation in Roman law and rhetoric, but lived a 



3 Hippolytus followed up at Rome the Alexandrine doctrine and position 
of Pantaenus and Clemens, and was the predecessor of Origen, etc. 
Bunsen. 

*Ad Autolicum, lib. II, cap. 26, Vol. VI, Migne's Patrologiae. 



192 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

heathen into mature manhood, and confesses that 
his life had been one of vice and licentiousness. 5 
Converted to Christianity he became in later years 
a presbyter. He lived a moral and religious life af- 
ter his conversion, but the heathen doctrines he re- 
tained rendered his spirit harsh and bitter. About 
A. D. 202 he joined the Montanists, a schismatic, as- 
cetic sect. Those who sympathized with him were 
known as Tertullianists as late as the Fifth Century. 
His abilities were great, but, as Schaff says, he was 
the opposite of the equally genial, less vigorous, 
but more learned and comprehensive Origen. 

Tertullian was the first of the Africo-Latin 
writers who commanded the public ear, and there is 
strong ground for supposing that 
Advocates End- since Tertullian quotes the sacred 
less Torment. writings perpetually and copiously, 

the earliest of those many Latin ver- 
sions noticed by Augustine and on which Jerome 
grounded his vulgate, were African. * * * ' 'Af- 
rica, not Rome, gave birth to Latin Christianity." 
A learned writer states: "His own authority is 
small, he was not a sound divine, became heterodox, 
and fell away into one of the heresies of his times." 6 
The fountain of Paganism in the heart of Tertul- 
lian discharged its noxious waters into into the lar- 
ger reservoir in the mighty brain of Augustine, and 
thence in the Sixth Century it submerged Christen- 
dom with a deluge that lasted for a thousand years, 
— now happily subsiding, to give place to those 



6 De resur. earn., chap. 59. "Ego me scio neque alia came adulteria 
commisse, neque nunc alia carne ad continentian eniti." 
«Oxford Tracts for the Times, No. XVII. 



A THIRD CENTURY GROUP 193 

primal Christian truths that were in the hearts of 
Clement and Origen. Tertullian and Origen 
were as tinlike as the churches they represent, — the 
Latin and the Greek. Narrow, Pagan, cruel, un- 
christian, the dark path of the Tertullian- Augustine 
type of Christianity through the centuries is strewn 
with the wrecks of ignorance and sorrow. He re- 
tained his heathen notions and gave them a Christian 
label. He makes the Underworld, like the heathen, 
divided by an impassable gulf into two parts. The 
abode of the righteous is sinus Abrakcz, that of the 
wicked ignis or inferi. Tertullian was probably 
the first of the fathers to assert that the torments of 
the lost will be of equal duration with the happiness 
of the saved. ' 'God will recompense his worshipers 
with life eternal; and cast the profane into a fire 
equally perpetual and unintermitted. " 7 

In Tertullian's Apology are fifty arguments for 
the Christian religion, but not once does he state 
that endless punishment was one of the doctrines of 
the church. He seems to have been half-inclined to 
the truth, for he speaks of the sinner as being able, 
after death, to pay ' ' the uttermost farthing. " 

Tertullian illustrates the effect of the doctrine 
he advocated in his almost infernal exultations over 
the future torments of the enemies of the church. 
" How I shall admire, how I shall laugh, how exult," 
he cries with fiendish glee, "to see the torments of 
the wicked." * * * "I shall then have a better 
chance of hearing the tragedians call louder in their 
own distress ; of seeing the actors more lively in the 

7 Apol., cap. 18. 



194 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

dissolving flame ; of beholding the charioteer glow- 
ing in his fiery chariot ; of seeing their wrestlers toss- 
ing on fiery waves instead of in their gymnasium, " 
etc. 8 Referring to the " spectacles " he anticipates, 
he says: " Faith grants us to enjoy them even now, 
by lively anticipation ; but what shall the reality be 
of those things which eye hath not seen, nor ear 
heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to 
conceive? They may well compensate, surety, the 
circus and both amphitheatres and all the spectacles 
the world can offer." No wonder DePressense says, 
"This joy in the anticipation of the doom of the ene- 
mies of Christ is altogether alien to the spirit of the 
Gospel ; that mocking laugh, ringing across the abyss 
which opens to swallow up the persecutors," etc. 
But why "alien," if a God of love ordained, and 
the gentle Christ executes, the appalling doom? 
Was not Tertullian nearer the mood a Christian 
should cultivate than are those who are shocked by 
his description, if it is true? Max Muller calls at- 
tention to the fact that Tertullian and the Latin 
fathers were obliged to cripple the Greek Christian 
thought by being destitute of even words to express 
it. He has to use two words, verbum and ratio, to 
express Logos. ' ' Not having Greek tools to work 
with," he says, "his verbal picture often becomes 
blurred. " 

Hase says that Tertullian was a " gloomy, fiery 
character, who conquered for Christianity, out of the 
Punic Latin, a literature in which ingenious rhetoric, 
a wild imagination, a gross, sensuous perception of 

8 Quid admirer? quidrideam? ubi gaudeam, ubi exsultem, spectans tot 
et tantos, etc. De Spectaculis. xxx. 



A THIRD CENTURY GROUP. 195 

the ideal, profound feeling, and a juridical under- 
standing struggled with each other." 

Ambrose of Alexandria. 

Ambrose of Alexandria, A. D. 180-250, was of a 
noble and wealthy family. Meeting Origen he ac- 
cepted Christianity as taught by the magister orien- 
tis, and urged and stimulated his great teacher to 
write his many books, and used his fortune to further 
them. Thus we owe generally, it is said, nearly all 
the exegetical works of Origen to Ambrose's influ- 
ence and money; and especially his commentary on 
St. John. It was at his request also that Origen 
composed his greatest work, the answer to Celsus. 
He left no writings of his own except some letters, 
but his devotedness to Origen, and his agency in 
promoting the publication of his works, should con- 
vince us that Origen's views are substantially his 
own. 9 

THE MANICHiEANS. 

The Manichaeans, followers of Mani, were a con- 
siderable sect that had a following over a large part 
of Christendom from A. D. 277 to 500. Eusebius is 
very bitter in describing the sect and its founder. 
"He was a madman," and his "ism, patched up of 
many faults and impious heresies, long since extinct. " 
Socrates calls it ' 'a kind of heathenish Christianity," 
and says it is composed of a union of Christianity 
with the doctrines of Empedocles and Pythagoras. 
Lardner quotes the evident misrepresentations of 
Eusebius and Socrates and exposes their inaccura- 

•Euseb. Hist. Eccl. B. vi. 



i 9 6 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

cies. A large amount of literature was expended on 
some of their doctrines, but not on their denial of 
endless torment. In fact, Didymus the Blind, as 
well as Augustine, seems to have opposed their er- 
rors, though the "merciful doctor" gives them, as 
Lardner says, "no hard names," while the father of 
Calvinism treats them with characteristic severity, 
ignoring what he himself acknowledges elsewhere, 
that for eight or nine years he accepted their tenets. 
Referring to the vile practices and doctrines with 
which they are charged, Lardner says: "The 
thing is altogether incredible, especially when re- 
lated of people who by prof ession were Christians ; 
who believed that Jesus Christ was a perfect model 
of all virtues ; who acknowledged the reasonableness 
and excellence of the precepts of the Gospel, and 
that the essence of religion lies in obeying them." 
The consensus of ancient authorities proves the 
Manichseans to have been an unpopular but reputa- 
ble Christian sect. 

Mani was a Persian, a scholar, and a Christian. 
Beginning his debate with Archelaus, he says: 

"I, brethren, am a disciple and an 
Manichaean apostle of Jesus Christ;" and he 

Doctrines. and his followers everywhere claim 

to be disciples of our Lord. Among 
their dogmas, was one that denied endless exist- 
ence to the devil, who was then considered 
to be almost the fourth person in the popular 
Godhead, — they repudiated the resurrection of the 
body and clearly taught universal restoration. Lard- 
ner quotes Mani in his dispute with Archelaus, as 
saying: "All sorts of souls will be saved, and the 



A THIRD CENTURY GROUP. 197 

lost sheep will be brought back to the fold." And 
after quoting their adversaries as stating that the 
Manichaeans taught the eternity of hell torments, 
Lardner says, quoting Beausobre: "All which 
means no more than a privation of happiness, or a 
labor and task, rather than a punishment. Indeed it 
is reasonable to think the Manichaeans should allow 
but very few, if any, souls to be lost and perish for- 
ever. That could not be reckoned honorable to the 
Deity, considering how souls were sent into matter." 10 
Lardner is certainly within bounds when he says : 
"But it is doubtful whether they believed the eter- 
nity of hell torments." 

The astonishing way in which, as Wendell Phil- 
lips once said, " what passes for history, " is written, 

may be seen in Professor William G. 
Prof. Shedd's His- T. Shedd's ''History of Christian Doc- 
torical Inaccuracy, trine." He says: " The punishment 

inflicted upon the lost was regarded 
by the fathers of the ancient church, with very few 
exceptions, as endless. * * * The only excep- 
tion to the belief in the eternity of future punish- 
ment in the ancient church appears in the Alexan- 
drine school. Their denial of the doctrine sprang 
logically out of their anthropology. Clement of 
Alexandria, and Origen, we have seen, asserted with 
great earnestness the tenet of a plenary and inalien- 
able power in the human will to overcome sin. The 
destiny of the soul is thus placed in the soul itself. 
The power of free will cannot be lost, and if not ex- 
erted in this world, it still can be in the next ; and 

10 Beausobre, Hist, de Manich. 1, 9, chs. 7-9. See the remarkable quota- 
tions concerning Mani in Lardner Vol. III. 



t 9 8 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

tinder the full light of the eternal world; and tmdei 
the stimulus of suffering there experienced, nothing 
is more probable than that it will be exerted. The 
views of Origen were almost wholly confined to this 
school. Faint traces of a belief in the remission of 
punishments in the future world are visible in the 
writings of Didymus of Alexandria, and in Gregory 
of Nyssa. * * * With these exceptions, the an- 
cient church held that the everlasting destiny of the 
human soul is decided in this earthly state. " n The 
reader who will turn to the sketches of Didymus and 
Gregory will discover what Prof. Shedd denominates 
"faint traces," and in the multitudes of quotations 
from others of the fathers who were not of the Alex- 
andrine school, he will see how utterly inaccurate is 
this religious historian. Numerous quotations flatly 
contradict his assertion. The verbal resemblance of 
Dr. Shedd's language to that of Hagenbach, cannot 
be wholly due to accident. u Prof. Shedd, however, 
contradicts what Schaff and Hagenbach declare to 
be the truth of history. He says that the Alex- 
andrine school was the only exception to a univer- 
sal belief in endless punishment, except the faint 
traces in Gregory of Nyssa; while Hagenbach insists 
that Gregory is more explicit, and Neander affirms 
that the school of Antioch as well as that of Alexan- 
dria, were Universalistic. Furthermore, Prof. Shedd 
does not seem to have remembered the words he had 
written with his own pen in his translation of Guer- 
ike's Church History: 13 "It is noticeable that the 



"Vol. II, pp. 414-416. 

"Hist. Doct. II, Sec. 142. Edin. Ed. 1884. 

13 P. 349, note. 



A THIRD CENTURY GROUP. 199 

exegetico-grammatical school of Antioch, as well as 
the allegorizing Alexandrian, adopted and maintained 
the doctrine of restoration." Says Hagenbach, 
1 ' Some faint traces of a belief in the final remission 
of punishments in the world to come are to be found 
in those writings of Didymus of Alexandria, which 
are yet extant. * * * Gregory of Nyssa speaks 
more, distinctly upon this point, pointing out the cor- 
rective design of the punishments inflicted upon 
the wicked. " Hagenbach expressly places Greg- 
ory and Didymus as differing, while Shedd makes 
them agree. But Neander declares: "From two 
theological schools there went forth an opposition to 
the doctrine of everlasting punishment, which had its 
ground in a deeper Christian interest ; inasmuch as 
the doctrine of a universal restoration was closely 
connected with the entire dogmatic systems of both 
these schools, namely, that of Origen, and the 
school of Antioch. " M 

"Vol. II, p. 676. 



XIV. 

MINOR AUTHORITIES. 

Among the celebrated fathers who have left no 

record of their views of human destiny, but who, 

from their positions, and the rela- 

Several Fathers. tions they sustained > must > beyond 
all rational doubt, have been Univer- 
salists, may be mentioned Atheno- 
dorus, who was a student of Origen's, and a bishop 
in Pontus; Heraclas, a convert of Origen's, his as- 
sistant and successor in the school at Alexandria, 
and bishop of Alexandria; Firmilian, a scholar of 
Origen's, and bishop of Caesarea; and Palladius, 
bishop in Asia Minor. 

Firmilian, though he wrote little, and is therefore 
not much known, was certainly very conspicuous in 
his day. His theology may be gauged from the fact 
that • ' he held Origen in such high honor that he 
sometimes invited him into his own district for the 
benefit of the churches, and even journeyed to Judea 
to visit him, spending long periods of time with 
him in order to improve in his knowledge of the- 
ology. Ml He was a warm friend of Dionysius, 
Cyprian, and Gregory Thaumaturgus, and was 
chosen president of the Council of Antioch. 

Dionysius — styled by Eusebius ' 'the great bishop 

»Eusebius, VI: -26. 

200 



MINOR AUTHORITIES. 201 

of Alexandria, " born A. D. 195 — died 265 — became 
the head of the Catechetical school 
in Alexandria A. D. 231, and suc- 
ceeded Heraclas as bishop of Alex- 
andria, A. D. 248. He was a con- 
stant friend of Origen, and after the opposition to 
him had begun, Dionysius addressed him "On Per- 
secution," — A. D. 259 — and wrote a letter in his 
praise after his death, to Theotecnus, bishop of 
Caesarea, A. D. 265. Neale says: "The loss of 
the writings of Dionysius is one of the greatest that 
had been suffered by ecclesiastical history." 2 

Theognostus and Pierius were Alexandrine cate- 
chists after the death of Dionysius. The fact that- 
Photius reprobates the doctrine, while he praises 
the eloquence, of Theognostus, as does Athanasius, 
indicates that these eminent scholars were of the 
faith of their master. Pierius, in fact, must have 
been, for he was called the "Second Origen," (Ori- 
genes Junior). 

Gregory Thaumaturgus — A. D. 210-270 — in 
his panegyric on Origen, ascribes his own intellectual 
and religious birth and life to his master, and gives 
the best description extant of the methods and abil- 
ity of that most eminent of all the Christian teachers 
and fathers. Their mutual regard is shown by sur- 
viving letters from both. If nothing were in exist- 
ence from Gregory, expressive of his Universalian 
sentiments, the fact that he was Origen's pupil for 
five years, and delivered his famous encomium on 
his teacher, would go far to establish his acceptance 

8 Holy Eastern Church, I: H. Eusebius repeatedly speaks of him in the 
loftiest terms. 



202 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

of the doctrine. He says : ' 'My guardian angel, on 
our arrival at Caesarea, handed us over to the care 
and tuition of Origen, that leader of all, who speaks 
in undertones to God's dear prophets, and suggests 
to them all their prophecy and their mystic and di- 
vine word, has so honored this man Origen as a 
friend, as to appoint him to be their interpreter." 
As Origen spoke, Gregory tells us he kindled a love 
"in my heart I had not known before. This love in- 
duced me to give up country and friends, the aims 
which I had proposed to myself, the study of law of 
which I was proud. I had but one passion, one 
philosophy, and the god-like man who directed me 
in the pursuit of it." He became bishop of Caesarea, 
and was regarded as the incarnation of the ortho- 
doxy of his times. Almost nothing of his writings 
has survived, but Rufinus, the apologist and de- 
fender of Origen, gives a passage, says Allin, show- 
ing that he taught the divine truth he learned from 
his master. 

Pamphilus, A. D. 250-309, was one of the great- 
est scholars of his times. He founded the famous 
library of Caesarea, which contained some of the most 
ancient codices of the New Testament, and also Ori- 
gen's books in their original Greek. Pamphilus 
wrote an "Apology" and defense of Origen, with 
whom he was in full sympathy. Eusebius wrote the 
biography of Pamphilus in three books. Unfortunately 
it has been lost, so that nothing survives of the works 
of this eminent Christian writer and scholar. The es- 
teem in which he was held by Eusebius may be 
gauged from the fact that after his death Eusebius, 
"the father of ecclesiastical history," changed his 



MINOR AUTHORITIES. 203 

own name to " Pamphilus's Eusebius. " The "Apol- 
ogy" contained "very .many testimonies of fathers 
earlier than Origen in favor of restitution." 3 How 
lamentable that these "testimonies " are lost! What 
light they would shed on early opinion on the great 
theme of this book. As Origen was born about 
ninety years after St. John's death, these very nu- 
merous "testimonies" would carry back these doc- 
trines very close, or altogether to the apostolic age. 

"With Pamphilus, the era of free Christian theol- 
ogy of the Eastern church ends. " Pamphilus, according 
to Eusebius, was ' ' a man who excelled in every virtue 
through his whole life, whether by a renunciation 
and contempt of the world, by distributing his sub- 
stance among the needy, or by a disregard of worldly 
expectations, and by a philosophical deportment and 
self-denial. But he was chiefly distinguished above 
the rest of us by his sincere devotedness to the sa- 
cred Scriptures, and by an indefatigable industry in 
what he proposed to accomplish, by his great kind- 
ness and alacrity to serve all his relatives, and all 
that approached him." He copied, for the great 
library in Caesarea, most of Origen's manuscripts, 
with his own hands. 

Eusebius was probably born in Caesarea. He was a 
friend of Origen, and fellow-teacher with him in the 
Caesarean school, and published with Pamphilus a 
glowing defense of Origen in six books, of which five 
are lost. He also copied and edited many of his 
works. Dr. Beecher, in his " History of Future 
Retribution," asserts the Universalism of Eusebius, 

8 Routh, Rel. Sac, III, p. 498. Oxford ed., 1846. 



204 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

though Dr. Ballou, in his "Ancient History " does 
not quote him. 

On I Cor. xv : 28, Eusebius says: " If the subjec- 
tion of the Son to the Father means union with him, 
then the subjection of all to the Son means union with 
him. * * * Christ is to subject all things to him- 
self. We ought to conceive of this as such a salutary 
subjection as that by which the Son will be subject 
to him who subjects all to him." 4 Again on the 
second psalm : " The Son breaking in pieces his ene- 
mies for the sake of remolding them as a potter his 
own work, as Jer. xviii: 6, is to restore them once 
more to their former state. " Jerome distinctly says 
of Eusebius: •■ He, in the most evident manner, 
acquiesced in Origen's tenets. " His understanding 
of terms is seen where he twice calls the fire that 
consumed two martyrs "unquenchable" (asbesto 
puri). Eusebius is as severe in describing the sinner's 
woes as Augustine himself. He says: "Who those 
were (whose worm dieth not) he showed in the be- 
ginning of the prophecy, 'I have nourished and 
brought up children and they have set me at nought.' 
He spoke darkly then of those of the Jews who set 
at nought the saving grace. Which end of the un- 
godly our Savior himself also appoints in the Gospel, 
saying to those who shall stand on the left hand, * Go 
ye into the aionian fire, prepared for the devil and 
his angels. ' As then the fire is said to be aionian, 
so here 'unquenchable,' one and the same substance 
encircling them according to the Scriptures. " 

In varied and extensive learning, and as a theolo- 

*De Eccl. Theol., Migne, Vol. XXIV, pp. 1030-38. 



MINOR AUTHORITIES. 205 

gian and writer, and most of all as an historian, 
Eusebius was far before most of those of his times; 
and though high in the confidence of his Emperor, 
Constantine, he did not make his influence contri- 
bute to his own personal aggrandizement. He was 
so kind toward the Arians, with whom he did not 
agree, that he was accused of Arianism by such as 
could not see how one could differ from another 
without hating him. Most of his writings have per- 
ished. Of course his name is chiefly immortalized 
by his "Ecclesiastical History." 

Athanasius (A. D. 296-373). This great man 
was a student of Origen and speaks of him with 
favor, defends him as orthodox, and quotes him as 
authority. He argues for the possibility of repent- 
ance and pardon for even the sin against the Holy 
Ghost. He says: "Christ captured over again the 
souls captured by the devil, for that he promised in 
saying, * I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto 
me. '"On Ps. lxviii, 18: "When, then, the whole 
creation shall meet the Son in the clouds, and shall 
be subject to .him, then, too, shall the Son himself 
be subject to the Father, as being a faithful Apostle, 
and High Priest of all creation, that God may be all 
in all. " 5 Athanasius nominated Didymus the Blind 
as president of the Catechetical school of Alexan- 
dria, where he presided sixty years, an acknowl- 
edged Universalist, which is certainly evidence of 
the sympathies, if not of the real views of Athana- 
sius. He called Origen a "wonderful and most la- 
borious man, " and offers no condemnation of his 
eschatology. 

5 Sermon Major de fide. Migne, vol. XXVI. pp. 1263-1294. 



206 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Didymus, "the illustrious," the Blind, was born, 
it is supposed, in Alexandria, A. D. 309. He be- 
came entirely blind when four years of age, and 
learned to write by using tablets of wood. He knew 
the Scriptures by heart, through hearing them read. 
He died, universally esteemed, A. D. 395. He was 
held to be strictly orthodox, though known to cher- 
ish the views of Origen on universal restoration. 
After his death, in the councils of A. D. 553, 680, 
and 787, he was anathematized for advocating Ori- 
gen's "abominable doctrine of the transmigration of 
souls," but nothing is said in condemnation of his 
pronounced Universalism. 

Of the Descent of Christ into Hades, he says, — 
as translated by Ambrose: "In the liberation of all 
no one remains a captive ; at the time of the Lord's 
passion, he alone (the devil) was injured, who lost 
all the captives he was keeping. " 6 Didymus argues 
the final remission of punishment, and universal sal- 
vation, in comments on I Timothy and I Peter. He 
was condemned by name in the council of Constanti- 
nople and his works ordered destroyed. Were they 
in existence no doubt many extracts might be given. 
Jerome and Rufinus state that he was an advocate 
of universal restoration. Yet he was honored by 
the best Christians of his times. Schaff says: 
" Even men like Jerome, Rufinus, Palladius, and Is- 
adore sat at his feet with admiration." After Jerome 
turned against Origen (See sketch of Jerome) he 
declares that Didymus defended Origen 's words as 
pious and Catholic, words that " all churches con- 

6 De Spir. Sanct., Ch. 44. 



MINOR AUTHORITIES. 207 

demn." And he adds: "In Didymtis we extol his 
great power of memory, and his purity of faith in the 
Trinity, but on other points, as to which he unduly 
trusted Origen, we draw back from him." Schaff 
declares him to have been a faithful follower of Ori- 
gen. Socrates calls him "the great bulwark of the 
true faith," and quotes Antony as saying: "Didy- 
mus, let not the loss of your bodily eyes distress you; 
for although you are deprived of such organs as con- 
fer a faculty of perception common to gnats and 
flies, you should rather rejoice that you have eyes 
such as angels see with, by which the Deity himself 
is discerned, and his light comprehended." Accord- 
ing to the great Jerome, he "surpassed all of his day 
in knowledge of the Scriptures. " He wrote volu- 
minously, but very little remains. 

He says: "For although the Judge at times in- 
flicts tortures and anguish on those who merit them, 
yet he who more deeply scans the reasons of things, 
perceiving the purpose of his goodness, who desires 
to amend the sinner, confesses him to be good." 

Again he says: *'As men, by giving up their 
sins, are made subject to him (Christ), so too, the 
higher intelligences, freed by correction from their 
willful sins, are made subject to him, on the comple- 
tion of the dispensation ordered for the salvation of 
all. God desires to destroy evil, therefore -evil is 
(one) of those things liable to destruction. Now 
that which is of those things liable to destruction 
will be destroyed." He is said by Basnage to have 
held to universal salvation. 

These are samples of a large number of extracts 
that might be made from the most celebrated of the 



208 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Alexandrine school, representing the type of theol- 
ogy that prevailed in the East, during almost four 
hundred years. They are not from a few isolated 
authorities but from the most eminent in the church, 
and those who gave tone to theological thought, and 
shaped and gave expression to public opinion. There 
can be no doubt that they are true exponents of the 
doctrines of their day, and that man's universal de- 
liverance from sin was the generally accepted view 
of human destiny, prevalent in the Alexandrine 
church from the death of the apostles to the end of 
the Fourth Century. And in this connection it 
may be repeated that the Catechetical school in 
Alexandria was taught by Anaxagoras, Pan- 
t^enus, Origen, Clement, Heraclas, Dionysius, 
Pierius, Theognostus, Peter Martyr, Arius and 
Didymus, all Universalists, so far as is known. The 
last teacher in the Alexandrine school was Didymus. 
After his day it was removed to Sida in Pamphylia, 
and soon after it ceased to exist. 7 

The historian Gieseler records that * ' the belief 
in the inalienable capability of improvement in all 
rational beings, and the limited duration of future 
punishment, was so general, even in the West, and 
among the opponents of Origen that, whatever may 
be said of its not having risen without the influence 
of Origen's school, it had become entirely indepen- 
dent of his system. " So that the doctrine may be 
said to have prevailed all over Christendom, East 



^Neander, Hist. Christ. .Dogmas, I, p. 265 (London, 1866), who cites 
Nieder (Kirchengeschichte), for full description of the different theological 
schools. 



MINOR AUTHORITIES. 209 

and West, among* "orthodox" and heterodox alike. 

Epiphanius. 

Epiphanius, a narrow-minded, credulous, violent- 
tempered, but sincere man, A. D. 310-404, was 
bishop of Constantia in Cyprus, A. D. 367. He bit- 
terly opposed Origen, and denounced him for a mul- 
titude of errors, but he does not hint that his views 
of restoration were objectionable to himself or to 
the church, at the time he wrote. He " began those 
miserable Origenistic controversies in which monkish 
fanaticism combined with personal hatreds and jeal- 
ousies to brand with heresy the greatest theologian 
of the primitive church. " 8 To his personal hatred 
and bitterness is due much, if not most, of the oppo- 
sition to Origenism that began in the latter part of 
the Fourth Century. In an indictment of eighteen 
counts, published A. D. 380, we find what possibly 
may have been the first intended censure of Univer- 
salism on record, though it will be observed that its 
animus is not against the salvation of all mankind, 
but against the salvability of evil spirits. Epipha- 
nius says : * ' That which he strove to establish I know 
not whether to laugh at or grieve. Origen, the re- 
nowned doctor, dared to teach that the devil is again 
to become what he originally was — to return to his 
former dignity. Oh, wickedness! Who is so mad 
and stupid as to believe that holy John Baptist, and 
Peter, and John the Apostle and Evangelist, and 
that Isaiah also and Jeremiah, and the rest of the 
prophets, are to become fellow-heirs with the devil 

»Dict. Christ. Biog., II, p. 15Q 



210 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

in the kingdom of Heaven!" 9 The reader can here 
see the possible origin of the familiar argument of 
recent times. 

In his book against heresies, "The Panarion," 
this "hammer of heretics" names eighty; but uni- 
versal salvation is not among them. The sixty- fourth 
is "Origenism," but, as is seen elsewhere in this vol- 
ume, that stood for other dogmas of Origen and not 
for his Universalism. 

Methodius, bishop of Tyre (A. D. 293). His 
writings, like so many of the works of the early fa- 
thers, have been lost, but Epiphanius and Photius 
have preserved extracts from his work on the resur- 
rection. He says: " God, for this cause, pronounced 
him (man) mortal, and clothed him with mortality, 
that man might not be an undying evil, in order that 
by the dissolution of the body, sin might be destroyed 
root and branch from beneath, that there might not 
be left even the smallest particle of root, from which 
new shoots of sin might break forth." Again, ' * Christ 
was crucified that he might be adored by all created 
things equally, for 'unto him every knee shall bow,' ' 
etc. Again: " The Scriptures usually call ' destruc- 
tion ' the turning to the better at some future time. " 
Again : ' ' The world shall be set on fire in order to 
purification and renewal. " 10 

The general drift, as well as the definite state- 
ments of the minor authorities cited in this chapter, 
show the dominant sentiment of the times. 



«>Epiph. Epist. ad Johan. inter Hieron. Opp. IV, part, ii.in Ballou's 
Anc. Hist., p. 194. 

iQDe Resurr., VIII. 



XV. 

GREGORY NAZIANZEN. 

Gregory of Nazianzus, born A. D. 330, was one 
of the greatest orators of the ancient church. Gib- 
bon sarcastically says: "The title 
Bishop of of Saint has been added to his name, 

Constantinople. but the tenderness of his heart, and 
the elegance of his genius, reflect a 
more pleasing luster on the memory of Gregory Naz- 
ianzen." The child of a Christian mother, Nonna, 
he was instructed in youth in the elements of relig- 
ion. He enjoyed an early acquaintance with Basil, 
and in Alexandria with Athanasius. With Basil 
his friendship was so strong that Gregory says it 
was only one soul in two bodies. A. D. 361, he be- 
came presbyter, and in 379 he was called to the 
charge of the small, divided orthodox church in Con- 
stantinople, which had been almost annihilated by 
the prevalence of Arianism. He so strengthened and 
increased it, that the little chapel became the splen- 
did "Church of the Resurrection." A. D. 380 the 
Emperor Theodosius deposed the Arian bishop, and 
transferred the cathedral to Gregory. He was 
elected bishop of Constantinople in May, 381, and 
was president of the CEcumenical council in Constan- 
tinople, while Gregory Nyssa added the clauses to 
the Nicene creed. He resigned because of the hos- 
tility of other bishops, and passed his remaining days 

211 



212 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

in religious and literary pursuits. He died A. D. 
390 or 391. He was second to Chrysostom as an 
orator in the Greek church. More than this, he was 
one of the purest and best of men, and his was one 
of the five or six greatest names in the church's first 
five hundred years. Prof. Schaff styles him "one 
of the champions of Orthodoxy. " 

Gregory says : ' ' God brings the dead to life as 
partakers of fire or light. But whether even all shall 
hereafter partake of God, let it be elsewhere dis- 
cussed. " Again he says : "I know also of a fire not 

cleansing (Kadaprripiov) but chastising (Ko\.a<rrrjpiov), 

* * * unless anyone chooses even in this case to 
regard it more humanely, and creditably to the Chas- 
tiser. " This is a remarkable instance of the esoteric, 
and well may Petavius say: " It is manifest that in 
this place St. Gregory is speaking of the punishments 
of the damned, and doubted whether they would be 
eternal, or rather to be estimated in accordance with 
the goodness of God, so as at some time to be termi- 
nated." And Farrar well observes: " If this last 
sentence had not been added the passage would have 
been always quoted as a most decisive proof that 
this eminently great father and theologian held, 
without any modification, the severest form of the 
doctrine of endless torments." 

Gregory tells us: " When you read in Scripture 
of God's being angry, or threatening a sword against 
the wicked * * * understand this 
The Penalties rightly, and not wrongly * . * * 

of Sin. how then are these metaphors used? 

Figuratively. In what way? With 
a view to terrifying minds of the simpler sort." 



GREGORY NAZIANZEN. 213 

He writes again: "A few drops of blood renew 
the whole world, and become for all men that which 
rennet is for milk, uniting and drawing ns into one. " 
Christ is "like leaven for the entire mass, and hav- 
ing made that which was damned one with himself, 
frees the whole from damnation." And yet Gregory 
describes the penalties of sin in language as fearful 
as though he did not teach restoration beyond it. 
He says: "That sentence after which is no appeal, 
no higher judge, no defense through subsequent 
work ; no oil from the wise virgins or from those who 
sell, for the failing lamps; * * * but one last 
fearful judgment, even more just than formidable, 
yea, rather the more formidable because it is also 
just ; when thrones are set and the Ancient of Days 
sitteth, and books are open, and a stream of fire 
sweepeth * * * and they who have done evil 
to the resurrection of judgment * * * (where) 
the torment will be, with the rest, or rather above 
all the rest, to be cast off from God, and chat shame 
in the conscience which hath no end. " x 

The character of Gregory shows us the kind of 
mind that leans to the larger hope, or, perhaps, the 
disposition that the larger hope produces. Says 
Farrar: "Poet, orator, theologian; a man as great 
theologically as he was personally winning 2 * * * 
the sole man whom the church has suffered to share 
that title (Theologian) with the Evangelist St. John, 
* * * the most learned and the most eloquent 
bishop in one of the most learned ages of the church, 
whom St. Basil called 'a vessel of election, a deep 

»Orat. xl, Carm. xxi, Orat. xlii.; Migne, Vols. XXXVI, XXI. 
a See Ntwman's Hist. Essays, Vol. HI. 



214 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

well, a mouth of Christ;' whom Rufinus calls 'in- 
comparable in life and doctrine. ' Gregory of Nazi- 
anzus deserved the honor of sainthood if any man 
has ever done, being as he was, one of the bravest 
men in an age of confessors, one of the holiest men 
in an age of saints." * * * "In questions of es- 
chatology he seems more or less to have shared, 
though with wavering language, in some of the 
views of Origen, which the church has partly adopted 
and partly uncondemned — the view, especially, that 
there shall be hereafter a probatory and purifying 
fire, and that we may indulge a hope in the possible 
cessation, for many, if not for all, of the punish- 
ments which await sin beyond the grave. He speaks 
indeed far less openly than Gregory of Nyssa, of a 
belief in the final restoration of all things, but even 
this belief lies involved in his remarks on the proph- 
ecy of St. Paul, concerning that day when ' God shall 
be all in all.' " 

When Gregory and his congregation had been 
attacked in their church, while celebrating our 
Lord's baptism, by the Arian rab- 
r , s . . ble of Constantinople, in conse- 

quence of the report that they were 
Tritheists, Gregory heard that The- 
odorus was about to appeal for redress to Theodo- 
sius, whereupon the good man wrote that while pun- 
ishment might possibly prevent recurrence of such 
conduct, it was better to give an example of long- 
suffering. "Let us," said he, "overcome them by 
gentleness, and win them by piety; let their punish- 
ment be found in their own consciences, not in our 
resentment. Dry not up the fig-tree that may yet 



GREGORY NAZIANZEN. 215 

bear fruit." The Seventh General Council called 
him "Father of Fathers." 

That he regarded punishment after death as lim- 
ited, is sufficiently evident from his reference to the 
heretical Novatians: "Let them, if they will, walk 
in our way and in Christ's. If not, let them walk in 
their own way. Perchance there they will be bap- 
tized with the fire, with that last, that more laborious 
and longer baptism, which devours the substance 
like hay, and consumes the lightness of all evil." 3 

Neander says: "Gregory Nazianzen did not 
venture to express his own doctrine so openly (as 
Gregory Nyssen) but allows it sometimes to escape 
when he is speaking of eternal punishment. The An- 
tiochan school were led to this doctrine, not by Ori- 
gen but by their own thinkings and examination of 
the Scripture. They regarded the two-fold division of 
the development of the creature as a general law of 
the universe. This led to the final result of univer- 
sal participation in the unchangeable divine life. 
Hence the dTroKarao-rao-ts was taught by Diodorus of 
Tarsus, in his treatise on the Incarnation of God, 
and also by Theodoras. He applied Matt, v: 26, to 
prove a rule of proportion, and an end of punish- 
ment. God would not call the wicked to rise again 
if they must endure punishment without amend- 
ment." 4 



a Assemani Bibl. Orient. Tom. Ill, p. 323. 

4 Hist. Christ. Dogmas, Vol. II. Hagenbach testifies to the same. Dog- 
mas, Vol. I. 



XVI. 

THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA AND THE 
NESTORIANS. 

Theodore of Mopsuestia was born in Antioch, 
A. D. 350, and died 428 or 429. He ranked next to 
Origen in the esteem of the ancient church. For 
nearly fifty years he maintained the cause of the 
church in controversy with various classes of assail- 
ants, and throughout his life his orthodoxy was re- 
garded as unimpeachable. He was bishop for thirty- 
six years, and died full of honors ; but after he had 
been in his grave a hundred and twenty-five years, 
the church had become so corrupted by heathenism 
that it condemned him for heresy. He was anathe- 
matized for Nestorianism, but his Universalism was 
not stigmatized. His great renown and popularity 
must have caused his exalted views of God's charac- 
ter and man's destiny to prevail more extensively 
among the masses than appears in the surviving lit- 
erature of his times. 

His own words are: "The wicked who have 
committed evil the whole period of their lives shall 
be punished till they learn that, by continuing in 
sin, they only continue in misery. And when, by 
this means, they shall have been brought to fear 
God, and to regard him with good will, they shall 
obtain the enjoyment of his grace. For he never 
would have said, 'until thou hast paid the uttermost 

216 



THEODORE AND THE NESTORIANS. 217 

farthing, ' unless we can be released from suffering 
after having suffered adequately for sin; nor would 
he have said, ' he shall be beaten with many stripes, ' 
and again, * he shall be beaten with few stripes/ un- 
less the punishment to be endured for sin will have 
an end." 1 

Professor E. H. Plumptre writes: "Theodore of 
Mopsuestia teaches that in the world to come those 

who have done evil all their life long 
Views Defined by will be made worthy of the sweetness 
Great Scholars. of the divine beauty. " And in the 

course of a statement of Theodore's 
doctrine, Prof. Swete observes 2 that Theodore 
teaches that ' 'the punishments of the condemned will 
indeed be in their nature eternal, being such as be- 
long to eternity and not to time, but both reason and 
Scripture lead us to the conclusion that they will be 
remissible upon repentance. * Where, ' he asks, * would 
be the benefit of a resurrection to such persons, if 
they were raised only to be punished without end? ' 
Moreover, Theodore's fundamental conception of the 
mission and person of Christ tells him to believe 
that there will be a final restoration of all creation. " 3 
Theodore writes on Rom. vi, 6: "All have the 
hope of rising with Christ, so that the body having 
obtained immortality, thenceforward the proclivity 
to evil should be removed. God recapitulated all 
things in Christ * * * as though making a com- 
pendious renewal and restoration of the whole crea- 
tion to him. Now this will take place in a future 



1 AssemaniBib. Orient. Tom. III. 
«Dict. Christ. Biog. II, p. 194. 
•Ibid. IV, p, 946. 



218 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

age, when all mankind, and all powers possessed of 
reason, look up to him as is right, and obtain mutual 
concord and firm peace. " 4 

Theodore is said to have introduced universal 
restoration into the liturgy of the Nestorians, of 
which sect he was one of the foun- 
Author of Nes- ders. His words were translated 
torian Declarations, into the Syriac, and constituted the 
office of devotion among that re- 
markable people for centuries. His works were 
circulated all through Eastern Asia, through which, 
says Neander, the Nestorians diffused Christianity. 
This great body of Christians exerted a mighty in- 
fluence until they were nearly annihilated by the 
merciless Tamerlane. He is still venerated among 
the Nestorians as the "Interpreter." 

In Theodore's confession of faith he says, after 
stating that Adam began the first and mortal state, 
"But Christ the Lord began the second state. He in 
the future, revealed from heaven, will restore us all 
into communion with himself. For the apostle says: 
'The first man was of the earth earthy, the second 
man is the Lord from heaven, ' that is, who is to ap- 
pear hereafter thence, that he may restore all to the 
likeness of himself." 5 

The moderate and evangelical Dorner becomes 



*" Omnia * * * recapitulavit in Christo quasi quandam compendio- 
sam renovationem et adintegrationem totius faciens creaturae per eum 
* * * hoc autem in futuro saeculo erit, quando homines cuncti necnon et 
rationabiles virtutes ad ilium inspiciant, ut fas exigit, et concordiam inter 
sepacemque firmam obtineant." 

5 " The doctrine of universal restoration in the Nestorian churches dis- 
appeared by a nearly universal extermination of those churches." Beecher, 
Hist. Doc, Fut. Ret., p. 290. 



THEODORE AND THE NESTORIANS. 219 

eulogistic when referring to this eminent Universal- 
ist: " Theodore of Mopsuestia was 
Dorner on the crown and climax of the school 

Theodore. of Antioch. The compass of his 

learning, his acnteness, and as we 
must suppose also, the force of his personal charac- 
ter, conjoined with his labors through many years as 
a teacher both of churches and of young and talented 
disciples, and as a prolific writer, gained for him the 
title of Magister Orientis. " 6 He "was regarded 
with an appreciation the more widely extended as he 
was the first Oriental theologian of his time. " The- 
odore held that evil was permitted by the Creator, 
in order that it might become the source of good to 
each and all. He says: 

"God knew that men would sin in all ways, but 
permitted this result to come to pass, knowing that 
it would ultimately be for their advantage. For 
since God created man when he did not exist, and 
made him ruler of so extended a system, and offered 
so great blessings for his enjoyment, it was impos- 
sible that he should not have prevented the en- 
trance of sin, if he had not known that it would be 
ultimately for his advantage. " He also says that 
God has demonstrated that "the same result (that is 
seen in the example of Christ) shall be effected in all 
his creatures. " * * * God has determined "that 
there should be first a dispensation including evils, 
and that then they should be removed and universal 
good take their place." He taught that Christ is an 
illustration of universal humanity, which will ulti- 
mately achieve his status. 

6 Doct. and Per. of Christ., Div. II, Vol. 1, p. 50. 



220 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

It may be mentioned that though Origen and 

Theodore were Universalists, they reached their 

conclusions by different processes. 

Unity in Diversity. ° RIGEN exalted the freedo ™ of the 
will, and taught that it could never 
be trammeled, so that reformation 
could never be excluded from any soul. He held 
to man's pre-existence, and that his native sinfulness 
resulted from misconduct in a previous state of be- 
ing. He was also extremely mystical, and allegor- 
ized and spiritualized the Scripture. Its literal 
meaning was in his eyes of secondary account. The- 
odore, on the other hand, developed the grammati- 
cal and historical meaning of the Word, and dis- 
carded Origen's mysticism and allegorizing, and his 
doctrine of man's pre-existence, and instead of re- 
garding man as absolutely free, considered him as 
part of a divine plan to be ultimately guided by God 
into holiness. Both were Universalists, but they 
pursued different routes to the same divine goal. It 
is interesting to note the emphasis the early Univer- 
salists placed upon different points. The Gnostics 
argued universal salvation from the disciplinary pro- 
cess of transmigration; the Sibylline Oracles from 
the prayers of the good who could not tolerate the 
sufferings of the damned; Clemens Alexandrinus 
proved it from the remedial influence of all God's 
punishments; Origen urged the foregoing, but 
added the freedom of the will, which would ultimately 
embrace the good; Diodorus put it on the ground 
that God's mercy exceeds all the desert of sin ; The- 
odore of Mopsuestia, that sin is an incidental part 
of human education, etc. 



THEODORE AND THE NESTORIANS. 221 

After the condemnation of Origen, Theodore 
and Gregory, most of their works were destroyed 
by their bigoted enemies. The loss to the world by 
the destruction of their writings is irreparable. Some 
of Theodore's works are thought to exist in Syriac, 
in the Nestorian literature. The future may recover 
some of them, as the recent past has rescued the 
Sinai tic codex, the "Book of Enoch," and other an- 
cient manuscripts. 

The liturgies of the Nestorians, largely com- 
posed by Theodore, breathe the spirit of the uni- 
versal Gospel. In the sacramental liturgy he intro- 
duces Col. i: 19, 20, to sustain the idea of universal 
restoration : * ' For it pleased the Father that in him 
should all fullness dwell; and having made peace 
through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile 
all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they 
be things in earth, or things in heaven. " 7 
The Nestorians. 

The creed of the Nestorians never did, and does 
not in modern times, contain any recognition of end- 
less punishment. Mosheim says: "It is to the hon- 
or of this sect that, of all the Christian residents of 
the East, they have preserved themselves free from 
the numberless superstitions which have found their 
way into the Greek and Latin churches." 

A. D. 431, Nestorius and his followers were ex- 
communicated from the orthodox church for holding 
that Christ existed in two persons instead of two 
natures. They denied the accusation, but their ene- 
mies prevailed. Nestorius refused to call Mary 

7 Renaudot's Oriental Liturgies, Vol. II, p. 610. 



222 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

"The Mother of God," but was willing to compro- 
mise between those who held her to be such, and those 
who regarded her as ' 'Mother of man," by calling her 
"Mother of Christ." 8 The wonderful preservation 
and Christian zeal of the Nestorians under the yoke 
of Islam is one of the marvels of history. 

The worse than heathen Athanasian creed is not 
contained in any Nestorian ritual. Nor is the so- 
called Apostles' creed. But the Ni- 
The Nestorian cene is recognized. Among those 

Liturgies. immortalized in the "Gezza" are 

Gregory, Basil, Theodore of Mop- 
suestia, and Diodore, all Universalists. In the lit- 
urgy, said to be by Nestorius himself, but in which 
Theodore probably had a hand, occurs this lan- 
guage: "All the dead have slept in the hope 
of Thee, that by thy glorious resurrection Thou 
wouldest raise them up in glory. " 9 

Subsequent hands have corrupted the faith of 
Nestorius and Theodore. For example, the 
"Jewel," written by Mar Abd Yeshua, A. D. 1298, 
says that the wicked "shall remain on the earth" af- 
ter the resurrection of the righteous, and ' * shall be 
consumed with the fire of remorse * * * this is the 
true Hell whose fire is not quenched and whose 
worm dieth not. " But the earlier faith did not con- 
tain these ideas. The litany in the Khudra, for 
Easter eve, has these words: "O Thou Living One 



8 Theodoret, Hist, of Ch., pp. 2, 3. Theodore wrote two works on Here- 
sies in which he professes to condemn all the heresies of his times, but he 
does not mention Universalism. 

9 Badger's Nestorians and their Rituals, Vol. II.; Gibbon, Chap, XLVIL 
Draper, Hist. Int. Dev. Europe; Layard's Nineveh, 



THEODORE AND THE NESTORIANS. 223 

who descendedst to the abode of the dead and 
preachedst a good hope to the souls which were de- 
tained in Shed, we pray Thee, O Lord, to have 
mercy upon us." "Blessed is the king who hath de- 
scended into Sheol and hath raised us up, and who, 
by his resurrection, hath given the promise of regen- 
eration to the human race. " 

After giving numerous testimonials to the educa- 
tional, missionary and Christian zeal of the Nes- 

torians and other followers of The- 
Dr. Beecher on odore, Beecher says that these ad- 
Theodore, vocates of ancient Restorationism 

were "in all other respects Ortho- 
dox," and that their views did not prevent them 
"from establishing wide-spread systems of educa- 
tion, from illuminating the Arabs, and through them 
the dark churches who had sunk into midnight 
gloom." The Universalism of Theodore was salu- 
tary in its effects on himself and his followers. It 
did not " cut the nerve of missionary enterprise." 

Instructive Facts. 

It is then apparent in the writings of the fathers, 
during the first centuries of the Christian Era, that 
whatever views they entertained of human destiny, — 
whether they inculcate endless punishment, the anni- 
hilation of the wicked, or universal salvation, they 
use the word aionios to describe the duration of pun- 
ishment, showing that for half a millennium of years 
the word did not possess the sense of endlessness. 
And it is noticeable that there is no controversy on 
the apparent difference of opinion among them on 
the subject of man's destiny. And it is probable that 



224 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

many of the writers who say nothing explicit, held 
to the doctrine of universal restoration, as it is seen 
that as soon as an author unmistakably accepts end- 
less punishment he warmly advocates it. 

And can the fact be otherwise than significant, 
that while Tertullian and other prominent defend- 
ers of the doctrine of endless punish- 
Character of Early ment were reared as heathen, and 
Universalists. even confess to have lived corrupt 

and vicious lives in their youth, Ori- 
gen, the Gregories, Basil the Great, Didymus, 
Theodore, Theodorus and others were not only the 
greatest among the saints in their maturity, but were 
reared from birth by Christian parents, and grew up 
" in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? " 

Dr. Beecher pays this remarkable testimony: 
" I do not know an unworthy, low, or mean character 
in any prominent, open, and avowed Restorationist of 
that age of freedom of i?tquiry which was inaugurated 
by the Alexandrine school, and defended by Origen. 
But besides this it is true * * * that these an- 
cient believers in final restoration lived and toiled 
and suffered, in an atmosphere of joy and hope, and 
were not loaded with a painful and crushing burden 
of sorrow in view of the endless misery of inumera- 
ble multitudes. * * * It may not be true that 
these results were owing mainly to the doctrine of 
universal restoration. It may be that their views of 
Christ and the Gospel, which were decidedly Ortho- 
dox, exerted the main power to produce these re- 
sults. But one thing is true : the doctrine of univer- 
sal restoration did not hinder them. If not, then 
the inquiry will arise, Why should it now?" "In 



THEODORE AND THE NESTORIANS. 225 

that famous age of the church's story, the period 
embracing the Fourth and the earlier years of the 
Fifth Century, Universalism seems to have been the 
creed of the majority of Christians in East and West 
alike; perhaps even of a large majority * * * 
and in the roll of its teachers * * * were * * * 
most of the greatest names of the greatest age of 
primitive Christianity. * * * And this teaching, 
be it noted, is strongest where the language of the 
New Testament was a living tongue; i. e. , in the 
great Greek fathers; it is strongest in the church's 
greatest era, and declines as knowledge and purity 
decline. On the other hand, endless penalty is most 
strongly taught precisely in those quarters where the 
New Testament was less read in the original, and 
also in the most corrupt ages of the church. " 10 



10 Universalism Asserted, p. 148. 

Note.— Olshausen declares that the opposition to the doctrine of end- 
less punishment and the advocacy of universal restoration has always been 
found in the church, and that it has " a deep root in noble minds." His 
language is (Com. I., on Matt, xii: 32.:) 

„T>a8 ©efiiljl aber, roelcrjesS fidEj in ben 23ettbeibigern einer apokatas- 
tasis ton panton (beren cS gu cxller Qeit triele gab unb in unferer geit me^t 
alS in trgenb einet frufjern) gegen bie Sefjre bon bee (SnblofigEeit ber ©trafen 
ber ©ottlofen ouSfbtictjt, mag oft in einem erfc^lafften jittltcben a3ettmf3tfettn 
begriinbet fetjn, bocb tjat e§ obne Qtoetiel and) eine tiefe aDQurjel in ebeln 
©emutbern; eaiftber SIuSbrucE bee ©efjnfucbt nadj tooflenbeter $armonte 
in ber ©cbopfung." 



XVII. 

A NOTABLE FAMILY. 

The family group of which Basil the Great, 
Macrina the Blessed, the distinguished bishop of 
Nyssa, Gregory, and the less-known Peter of Se- 
baste were members, deserves a volume rather than 
the few pages at our command. Three of the four 
were bishops at one time. Macrina, her father 
and mother, her grandmother Macrina, and three of 
her brothers were all canonized as saints in the an- 
cient church. We are not surprised that Butler, in 
his ' ' Lives of the Fathers, ' ' should say : * ' We admire 
to see a whole family of saints. This prodigy of 
grace, under God, was owing to the example, prayers 
and exhortation of the elder St. Macrina, which 
had this wonderful influence and effect. m 
" Macrina the Blessed." 

Macrina was born A. D. 327. By her intellec- 
tual ability, force of character, and earnest piety she 
became the real head of the family, and largely 
shaped the lives of her distinguished brothers. She 
early added the name Thecla to her baptismal name, 
after the proto-martyr among Christian women. She 

^The materials of this sketch and of the article on Gregory Nyssen were 
chiefly procured from " Our Holy Father Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa's 
Thoughts concerning the Life of the Blessed Macrina, his Sister, to the 
Monk Olympius;" and " Dialogue Concerning Life and Resurrection, with 
the Opinions of his Sister Macrina;" Leipsic, 1858. The work is in Greek 
and German. Also from Migne's Patrologiae, Vol. XLVI. 

226 



A NOTABLE FAMILY. 227 

was educated with great care by her mother, under 
whose direction she committed to memory large por- 
tions of the Bible, including the whole of the Psalms. 

Her rare personal beauty, great accomplishments 
and large fortune attracted many suitors ; Gregory 
says she surpassed in loveliness all of her age and 
country. She was betrothed to a young advocate, 
who was inspired and stimulated by her ambition and 
zeal, but was cut off by an early death. She thence- 
forth regarded herself as a wife in the eyes of God, 
and confident of a reunion hereafter, refused to listen 
to offers of marriage, saying that her betrothed was 
living in a distant realm, and that the resurrection 
would reunite them. 

A. D. 349, when she was twenty- two, her father 

died, and thenceforth she devoted herself to the care 

of her widowed mother and the fam- 

A Saintly Woman. ^ of nine children, and large estates 
which were scattered through three 
provinces. Her rare executive abil- 
ity and personal devotedness to her mother and 
brothers and sisters were phenomenal, descending to 
the most minute domestic offices. 

After the death of her father, and on the death 
of her brother Naucratius, A.D. 357, she never left 
her home, a beautiful place in Annesi, near Neo- 
Caesarea. 

A. D. 355, on the return of her brother Basil 
from Athens, full of conceit and the ambition in- 
spired by his secular learning, Macrina filled his 
mind and heart with the love for a life of Christian 
service that animated herself, and he located himself 
near his sister. In 355 she established a religious 



228 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

sisterhood with her mother, and consecrated her life 
to retirement and religious meditation, holy thoughts 
and exercises — as she said, ' ' to the attainment of 
the angelical life. " The community consisted of her- 
self, her mother, her female servants and slaves, and 
soon devout women of rank joined them, and the 
community became very prosperous. 

Peter was made presbyter A. D. 37 1. Her mother 
died in 373 and her distinguished brother in 379. Her 
own health had failed, when, some months after Ba- 
sil's death, her brother Gregory visited her. 2 He 
found her in an incurable fever, stretched on planks 
on the ground, and, according to the ascetic ideas 
then beginning to prevail, the planks barely covered 
with sackcloth. Gregory relates what followed 
with great minuteness. He was overwhelmed with 
grief at Basil's death. Macrina comforted him, 
and even rebuked him for mourning like a heathen 
when he possessed the Christian's hope. He de- 
scribed the persecutions he had experienced, where- 
upon she chided and reminded him that he ought 
rather to thank his parents who had qualified him to 
be worthy of such experiences. Gregory relates 
that she controlled all evidences of suffering, and that 
her countenance continually wore a seraphic smile. 

He probably gives us her exact sentiments in his 
own language on universal restoration, in which she 
rises into a grand description of the 
Macrina's Relig- purifying effects of all future pun- 
ious Sentiments. ishment, and the separation thereby 
of the evil from the good in man, 
and the entire destruction of all evil. Her words 

sDict. Christ. Biog. Ill, p. 780. 



A NOTABLE FAMILY. 229 

tell us their mutual views. On the "all in all" 3 of 
Paul she says: 

"The Word seems to me to lay down the doctrine 
of the perfect obliteration of wickedness, for if God 
shall be in all things that are, obviously wickedness 
shall not be in them. " " For it is necessary that at some 
time evil should be removed utterly and entirely 
from the realm of being. * * * For since by its 
very nature evil cannot exist apart from free choice, 
when all free choice becomes in the power of God, 
shall not evil advance to utter annihilation so that 
no receptacle for it at all shall be left? " 

In this conversation in which the sister sustains 
by far the leading part, the resurrection (anastasis) 
and the restoration {apokatastasis) are regarded as 
synonymous, as when Macrina declares that "the 
resurrection is only the restoration of human nature 
to its pristine condition. " 4 

On Phil, ii: 10, Macrina declares: "When the 
evil has been extirpated in the long cycles of the 
aeons nothing shall be left outside the boundaries of 
good, but even from them shall be unanimously 
uttered the confession of the Lordship of Christ. " 5 

She said : ' ' The process of healing shall be pro- 
portioned to the measure of evil in each of us, and 
when the evil is purged and blotted out, there shall 
come in each place to each immortality and life and 
honor." 



3 IIavTa iv Va(rtv ("all things in all men.") 

4 p. 154, Oehler's ed. Life and Resurrection. 

6 Life and Resurrection, p. 68. In this passage Macrina employs the 
word aionion in its proper sense of ages. The German version translates 
it centuries (jahrhunderte). 



230 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Seeing the weariness of her brother she bade him 
rest. Revisiting her at the close of the day she re- 
viewed thankfully her past life and 

rejoiced that she had never in her life 
Her Last Days. r -, , , -, * -, 

J refused any one who had asked a 

charity of her, and had never been 
compelled to ask a charity for herself. 

Next morning, Gregory says, she consoled and 
cheered him as long as she could talk, and when her 
voice failed she conversed with her hands and silent 
lips. Repeating the sign of the cross to the latest 
moment she finished her life and her prayers to- 
gether. Her last words were in advocacy of the 
doctrine of universal salvation, of which Gregory's 
writings are full. 6 

She was buried by her brother in the grave of her 
parents, in the Chapel of the ' ' Forty Martyrs. " 

We have here a most suggestive picture to con- 
template. Macrina at the head of a sisterhood, con- 
sisting of several hundred women of 
Macrina a n j r i~ i j 

all grades, from her own rank down 
Representative ° ' . . 

Universalist. to s ^ aves - Their sole object was the 

cultivation of the religious life. Can 
it be otherwise than that the views of human destiny 
she held were dwelt upon by her in the religious 
exercises of the institution, and must they not have 
been generally sympathized with by the devout in- 
mates? And can we doubt that those who had here 
retired from the world to cultivate their religious 



CButler, "Lives of the Saints," Vol. VII. pp. 260, 261. This Catholic 
work does not make the faintest allusion to Macrina's Universalism, And 
even our Dr. Ballou. in hia valuable Ancient History, while he mentions the 
grandmother, overlooks the far more eminent granddaughter. 



A NOTABLE FAMILY. 231 

natures, were representative in their views of human 
destiny of the Christian community generally? The 
fact that Macrina, and her brothers, high function- 
aries in the church, express Universalism, not polem- 
ically or disputatiously, but as a matter uncontested, 
should persuade us that it was the unchallenged sen- 
timent of the time. 

Curiously enough, Cave, in his " Lives of the 
Fathers," questions Macrina's Universalism. In 
his life of Gregory he says, after sketching Ma- 
crina's life: " She is said by some to have been in- 
fected with Origen's opinions, but finding it reported 
by no other than Nicephorus, I suppose he mis- 
took her for her grandmother, Macrina, auditor of 
St. Gregory, who had Origen for his tutor. " This is 
a specimen instance of the manner in which histo- 
rians have read history through theological spectacles, 
and written history in ink squeezed from their creeds. 

There is no doubt that the elder Macrina was of 
the same faith as her granddaughter, for she was a 
disciple of Gregory Thaumaturgus, who idolized 
Origen. On the testimony of Gregory of Nyssa, 
"the blessed Macrina" lived a holy life and died 
the death of a perfect Christian, molded, guided 
and sustained by the influence and power of Univer- 
salism. And the careful reader of the history of 
those early days can but feel that she represents 
the prevailing religious faith of the three first and 
three best centuries of the church. 
Basil the Great. 

Basil the Great was born in Caesarea, A. D. 329. 
His family were wealthy Christians. The preceding 
sketch shows that his grandmother Macrina, and 



232 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

his mother, Emmelia, were canonized. His broth- 
ers, Gregory of Nyssa, and Peter of Sebaste, and 
his sister Macrina are all saints in both the Greek 
and the Roman churches. His was a most lovable 
and loving spirit. His works abound in descriptions 
of the beauties of nature, which is something rare in 
ancient literature, outside of the Bible. He resided 
for many years in a romantic locality, with his 
mother and sister. A. D. 364, against his will, he 
was made presbyter, and in 370 was elected bishop of 
Caesarea. He died A. D. 379. He devoted himself to 
the sick, and founded the splendid hospital Basilias, 
for lepers, of whom he took care, not even neglect- 
ing to kiss them in defiance of contagion. He stands 
in the highest group of pulpit orators, theologians, 
pastors, and rulers, and most eminent writers and 
noble men of the church's first five hundred years. 
Basil says: "The Lord's peace is co- extensive 
with all time. For all things shall be subject to him, 
and all things shall acknowledge his 

D .„ . empire; and when God shall be all in 

Basil's Language. * ' 

all, those who now excite discord by 

revolts having been quite pacified, 

shall praise God in peaceful concord." * * * 

On the words in Isaiah, i: 24: " My anger will not 

cease, I will burn them," he says, "And why is this? 

In order that I may purify. " 

Basil was "the strenuous champion of orthodoxy 

in the East, the restorer of union to the divided 

Oriental church, and the promoter of unity between 

the East and the West." Theodoret styles him 

"one of the lights of the world. " 7 

'History of the Church, p. 176. 



A NOTABLE FAMILY. 233 

Among other quotable passages is this : ' ' For we 
have often observed that it is the sins which are con- 
sumed, not the very persons to whom the sins have 
befallen. " But there are passages to be found in Basil 
susceptible of sustaining the doctrine of interminable 
punishment. This great theologian was infected 
with the wretched idea prevalent in his day, that the 
wise could accept truths not to be taught to the mul- 
titude. But the brother of, and co-laborer with, 
Gregory of Nyssa, and the " Blessed Macrina, "he 
could but have sympathized with their sublime faith. 
Cave scarcely alludes to Basil's views of destiny, 
but faintly intimates the truth when he says: " For 
though his enemies, to serve their 
own ends by blasting his reputation, 
did sometimes charge him with cor- 
rupting the Christian doctrine, and 
entertaining impious and unorthodox sentiments, 
and that too in some of the greater articles, yet the 
objection, when looked into, did quickly vanish, him- 
self solemnly professing upon this occasion, that 
however in other respects he had enough to answer 
for, yet this was his glory and triumph, that he had 
never entertained false notions of God, but had con- 
stantly kept the faith pure and inviolate, as he had 
received it from his ancestors. " 

Remembering his sainted grandmother, Macrina, 
and his spiritual fathers, Origen and Clemens Alex- 
andrinus, we can understand his disclaimer. 8 

Notwithstanding Basil's probable belief in the 
final restoration, he employs as severe language in 

8 Lives of the Fathers, II, p. 451. 



234 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

reference to the sinner's sufferings as do any of 
the fathers who have left no record on the subject 
of man's final destiny. He says: "With what body 
shall it endure those interminable and unendurable 
scourges, where is the quenchless fire and the worm 
punishing deathlessly, and the dark and horrible abyss 
of hell, and the bitter groans, and the vehement 
wailing, and the weeping and gnashing of teeth, 
where the evils have no end. " 9 

He is said to have had learning the most ample, 
eloquence of the highest order, forensic powers un- 
surpassed, literary ability unequaled, 

Eulogies of Basil. " a st y le of writin 2 admirable, *1- 
most inimitable, proper, perspicuous, 

significant, soft, smooth and easy, 

and yet persuasive and powerful;" as a philosopher 

as wise as he was accomplished as a theologian. 

Erasmus gives him the pre-eminence above Pericles, 

Isocrates and Demosthenes, and ranks him higher 

than Athanasius, Nazianzen, Nyssen and Chrysos- 

tom. And Cave exhausts eulogy and panegyric in 

describing his "moral and divine accomplishments," 

and closes his account by saying : ' ' Perhaps it is an 

instance hardly to be paralleled in any age, for three 

brothers, all men of note and eminency, to be bishops 

at the same time. " 10 He might have added — and 

with a sister their full equal. 

Basil's grand spirit can be seen in his reply to 

the emperor, when the latter threatened him, should 

he not obey the sovereign's command. His noble 

answer compelled the emperor to forego his purpose. 

»Ep. XLVI, Classis I, ad virginem. 
i°Cave, Lives of the Fathers, II, 397. 



A NOTABLE FAMILY. 235 

Basil said he did not fear the emperor's threats; 
confiscation could not harm one who only possessed 
a suit of plain clothes and a few books; he could 
not be banished for he could find a home anywhere, 
as the earth was God's, and himself everywhere a 
stranger; his frail body could endure but little tor- 
ture, and death would be a favor, as it would only 
conduct him to God, his eternal home. 

Basil says in one place, in a work attributed to 

him, "The mass of men (Christians) say that there 

is to be an end of punishment to 

„. e . x . as ' those who are punished." u If the 

Christians . r 

Universalists. work is not Basil's, the testimony as 

to the state of opinion at that time is 
no less valuable: " The mass of men say that there 
is to be an end of punishment. " 

Gregory Nyssen. 

He was born about A. D. 335, and died 390. He 
was made bishop 372. From the time he was thirty- 
five until his death, he, Didymus and Diodorus of Tar- 
sus, were the unopposed advocates of universal redemp - 
tion. Most unique and valuable of all his works was 
the biography of his sister, described in our sketch of 
Macrina. His descriptions of her life, conversations 
and death are gems of patristic literature. They 
overflow with declarations of universal salvation. 

Gregory was devoted to the memory of Origen 
as his spiritual godfather, and teacher, as were his 
saintly brother and sister. He has well been called 
{ ' the flower of orthodoxy. " He declared that Christ 
' ' frees mankind from their wickedness, healing the 

n De Asceticis. 



236 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

very inventor of wickedness." He asks: "What is 
then the scope of St. Paul's argument in this place? 
That the nature of evil shall one day be wholly ex- 
terminated, and divine, immortal goodness embrace 
within itself all intelligent natures ; so that of all who 
were made by God, not one shall be exiled from his 
kingdom ; when all the alloy of evil that like a cor- 
rupt matter is mingled in things, shall be dissolved, 
and consumed in the furnace of purifying fire, and 
everything that had its origin from God shall be re- 
stored to its pristine state of purity. " " This is the 
end of our hope, that nothing shall be left contrary 
to the good, but that the divine life, penetrating all 
things, shall absolutely destroy death from existing 
things, sin having been previously destroyed," etc. 12 
11 For it is evident that God will in truth be ' in all ' 
when there shall be no evil in existence, when 
every created being is at harmony with itself, and 
every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is 
Lord; when every creature shall have been made 
one body. Now the body of Christ, as I have often 
said, is the whole of humanity." 13 On the Psalms, 
* ' Neither is sin from eternity, nor will it last to eter- 
nity. For that which did not always exist shall not 
last forever. " 

His language demonstrates the fact that the word 
aionios did not have the meaning of endless duration 
in his day. He distinctly says: " Whoever con- 
siders the divine power will plainly perceive that it 
is able at length to restore by means of the aionion 

12 Life and Resurrection and Letter to the Monk Olympius. 
"Cat. Orat. ch. 26, Migne, Tract, Filius subjicietur,— on I Cor. xv: 28— 
pasa he anthropine phusis, "The whole of humanity." 



A NOTABLE FAMILY. 237 

purgation and expiatory sufferings, those who have 
gone even to this extremity of wickedness." Thus 
"everlasting" punishment will end in salvation, ac- 
cording to one of the greatest of the fathers of the 
Fourth Century. 

In his c 'Sermo Catecheticus Magnus," a work of 
forty chapters, for the teaching of theological learners, 

written to show the harmony of 
Gregory's Christianity with the instincts of 

Language. the human heart, he asserts "the 

annihilation of evil, the restitution of 
all things, and the final restoration of evil men and 
evil spirits to the blessedness of union with God, so 
that he may be 'all in all,' embracing all things 
endued with sense and reason" — doctrines derived by 
him from Origen. To save the credit of a doctor of 
the church of acknowledged orthodoxy, it has been 
asserted from the time of Germanus of Constanti- 
nople, that these passages were foisted in by hereti- 
cal writers. But there is no foundation for this 
hypothesis, and we may safely say that ' ' the wish is 
father to the thought, " and that the final restitution 
of all things was distinctly held and taught by him 
in his writings. 

He teaches that " when death approaches to life, 
and darkness to light, and the corruptible to the 
incorruptible, the inferior is done away with and 
reduced to non-existence, and the thing purged is 
benefited, just as the dross is purged from gold by 
g r6t * * * j n t^ same wa y i n the long cir- 
cuits of time, when the evil of nature which is now 
mingled and implanted in them has been taken away, 
whensoever the restoration (dTro/carao-Tao-ts) to their 



238 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

old condition of the things that now lie in wickedness 
takes place, there will be a unanimous thanksgiving 
from the whole creation, both of those who have been 
punished (KeKoAao-^eVw) in the purification (KaOdpo-e*) 
and of those who have not at all needed purification) 

( KaOapcreois) . 

"I believe that punishment will be administered 
in proportion to each one's corruptness. * * * 
Therefore to whom there is much corruption attached, 
with him it is necessary that the purgatorial time 
which is to consume it should be great, and of long 
duration ; but to him in whom the wicked disposition 
has been already in part subjected, a proportionate 
degree of that sharper and more vehement punish- 
ment shall be remitted. All evil, however, must at 
length be entirely removed from everything, so that 
it shall no more exist. For such being the nature of 
sin that it cannot exist without a corrupt motive, it 
must of course be perfectly dissolved, and wholly de- 
stroyed, so that nothing can remain a receptacle of it, 
when all motive and influence shall spring from God 
alone," etc. 

The manner in which historians and biographers 
have been guilty of suppressio veri by their preju- 
dices or obtuseness to fact, is illus- 
Perversion of trated by Cave in his " Lives of the 

Historians. Fathers, " when, speaking -of this 

most out- spoken Universalist, he 
says, that on the occasion of the death of his sister 
Macrina, ' ' he penned his excellent book ( ' Life and 
Resurrection, ' ) wherein if some later hand have in- 
terspersed some few Origenian dogmata, it is no 
more than what they have done to some few other 



A NOTABLE FAMILY. 239 

of his tracts, to give his thoughts vent upon those 
noble arguments. " The "later" hands were im- 
pelled by altogether different "dogmata, " and sup- 
pressed or modified Origen's doctrines, as Rufinus 
confesses, instead of inserting them in the works of 
their predecessors. If Gregory has suffered at all 
at the hands of mutilators, it has been by those who 
have minimized and not those who have magnified 
his Universalism. But this aspersion originated with 
Germanus, bishop of Constantinople (A. D. 730), in 
harmony with a favorite mode of opposition to Uni- 
versalism. In Germanus's Antapodotikos he en- 
deavored to show that all the passages in Gregory 
which treat of the apokatastasis were interpolated 
by heretics. 14 This charge has often been echoed 
since. But the prejudiced Daille calls it "the last 
resort of those who with a stupid and absurd perti- 
nacity will have it that the ancients wrote nothing 
different from the faith at present received; for the 
whole of Gregory Nyssen's orations are so deeply 
imbued with the pestiferous doctrine in question, 
than it can have been inserted by none other than 
the author himself." 15 The conduct of historians, 
not only of those who were theologically warped, 
but of such as sought to be impartial on the opinions 
of the early Christians on man's final destiny, is 
something phenomenal. Even Lecky writes: "Ori- 
gen, and his disciple Gregory of Nyssa, in a some- 
what hesitating manner, diverged from the prevail- 
ing opinion (eternal torments) and strongly inclined 
* * * to the belief in the ultimate salvation of all. 

"Photius, Cod., 233. 

i5De Usu Patrum, lib. II, cap. 4. 



240 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

But they were alone in their opinion. With these 
two exceptions, all the fathers proclaimed the eter- 
nity of torments. " 16 It is shown in this volume that 
not only were Diodore, Theodore, and others of 
the Antiochan school Universalists but that for cen- 
turies four theological schools taught the doctrine. 
A most singular fact in this connection is that Prof. 
Shedd, elsewhere in this book, denies his own state- 
ment similar to Lecky's, as shown on a previous 
page. This is the testimony of Dr. Schaff in his 
valuable history: 

' ' Gregory adopts the doctrine of the final resto- 
ration of all things. The plan of redemption is in 
his view absolutely universal, and embraces all spir- 
itual beings. Good is the only positive reality ; evil 
is the negative, the non-existent, and must finally 
abolish itself, because it is not of God. Unbelievers 
must indeed pass through a second death, in order to 
be purged from the filthiness of the flesh. But God 
does not give them up, for they are his property, 
spiritual natures allied to him. His love, which 
draws pure souls easily and without pain to itself, 
becomes a purifying fire to all who cleave to the 
earthly, till the impure element is driven off. As 
all comes forth from God, so must all return into 
him at last. " "Universal salvation (including Sa- 
tan) was clearly taught by Gregory of Nyssa, a pro- 
found thinker of the school of Origen. " 

In his comments on the Psalms, Gregory says: 
' ' By which God shows that neither is sin from eter- 
nity nor will it last to eternity. Wickedness being 

18 Lecky's Rationalism in Europe, I, p. 316. 



A NOTABLE FAMILY. 241 

thus destroyed, and its imprint being left in none, 
all shall be fashioned after Christ, and in all that one 
character shall shine, which originally was imprinted 
on our nature." " Sin, * * * whose end is ex- 
tinction, and a change to nothingness * * * from 
evil to a state of blessedness." On Ps. lvii: 1 : " Sin 
* * * is like a plant on a house top, not rooted, 
not sown, not ploughed in * * * in the resto- 
ration to goodness of all things, it passes away and 
vanishes. So not even a trace of the evil which now 
abounds in us, shall remain, etc." If sin be not 
cured here its cure will be effected hereafter. And 
God's threats are that "through fear we may be 
trained to avoid evil ; but by those who are more in- 
telligent it (the judgment) is believed to be a medi- 
cine, ' ' etc. * ' God himself is not really seen in 
wrath." " The soul which is united to sin must be 
set in the fire, so that that which is unnatural and 
vile * * * may be removed, consumed by the 
aionion fire. " 17 Thus the (aioniori) fire was regarded 
by Gregory as purifying. "If it (the soul) remains 
(in the present life) the healing is accomplished in 
the life beyond." Ei Se aOtpairevros pwei iv tS fxera 
ravra )Sia> Ta/xteverat y OepaTreta. (Orat. Catech. ) 

Farrar tells us: " There is no scholar of any 
weight in any school of theology who does not now 
admit that two at least of thethree great Cappa- 
docians believed in the final and universal restor- 
ation of human souls. * * * And the remark- 
able fact is that Gregory developed these views 
without in any way imperiling his reputation for 

1T On the Psalms. 



242 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

orthodoxy, and without the faintest reminder that 
he was deviating from the strictest paths of Catholic 
opinion." Professor Plumptre truthfully says: " His 
Universalism is as wide and unlimited as that of 
Bishop Newton of Bristol." 

The Council of Constantinople, A. D. 381, which 
perfected the Nicene Creed, was participated in by 
the two Gregorys; Gregory Nazian- 
Opinions in the zen presided and Gregory Nyssen 
Fourth Century. added the clauses to the Nicene 
creed that are in in italics on a pre- 
vious page in this volume. They were both Univer- 
salists. Would any council, in ancient or modern 
times, composed of believers in endless punishment, 
select an avowed Universalist to preside over its de- 
liberations, and guide its "doctrinal transactions?" 
And can anyone consistently think that Gregory's 
Universalism was unacceptable to the great council 
over which he presided? " Some of the strongest 
statements of Gregory's views will be found in his 
enthusiastic reports of Macrina's conversations, re- 
lated in the preceding chapter, with which, every 
reader will see, he was in the fullest sympathy. Be- 
sides the works of Gregory named above, passages 
expressive of universal salvation may be found in 
"Oratiode Mortuis," "De Perfectione Christiani," 
etc. 

"By the days of Gregory of Nyssa it (Univer- 
salism), aided by the unrivaled learning, genius 
and piety of Origen, had prevailed, and had suc- 
ceeded in leavening, not the East alone, but much 
of the West. While the doctrine of annihila- 
tion has practically disappeared, Universalism has" 



A NOTABLE FAMILY. 243 

established itself, has become the prevailing opin- 
ion, even in quarters antagonistic to the school 
of Alexandria. * * * The church of North Af- 
rica, in the person of Augustine, enters the field. 
The Greek tongue soon becomes unknown in the 
West, and the Greek fathers forgotten. * * * On 
the throne of Him whose name is Love is now seated 
a stern Judge (a sort of Roman governor). The 
Father is lost in the Magistrate. " 18 

Dean Stanley candidly ascribes to Gregory 
" the blessed hope that God's justice and mercy are 
not controlled by the power of evil, that sin is not 
everlasting, and that in the world to come punish- 
ment will be corrective and not final, and will be or- 
dered by a love and justice, the height and depths 
of which we cannot here fathom or comprehend." 19 

"Allin, Univ. Asserted, p. 169. 
19 Essays on Church and State. 



XVIII. 

ADDITIONAL AUTHORITIES. 

Going back a little we find several authors whose 
works in part have escaped the ravages of time and 
the destructive hostility of opponents. We have 
found ourselves a hundred times wishing, while 
pursuing these enquiries, that the literature of the 
first five centuries could have been printed and scat- 
tered to the world's ends, instead of having been lim- 
ited, as it was, of course, before the invention of 
printing, to a few manuscripts so easily destroyed by 
the bigoted opponents of our faith into whose hands 
they fell. We should have many fold more testi- 
monies than have survived to tell the story of prim- 
itive belief. 

Marcellus of Ancyra, A. D. 315, quoted by 
Eusebius, says : ' ' For what else do the words mean, 
1 until the times of the restitution ' (Acts, iii : 21 ), but 
that the apostle designed to point out that time in 
which all things partake of that perfect restoration. " 

Titus of Bostra, A. D. 338-378. The editor of 
his works says that Titus was "the most learned 
among the bishops of his age, and a most famous 
champion of the truth. " Tillemont unwillingly ad- 
mits that " he seems to have followed the dangerous 
error ascribed to Origen, that the pains of the damned, 
and even those of the demons themselves, will not be 

244 



ADDITIONAL AUTHORITIES. 245 

eternal." 1 Certainly Titus's own language justifies 
this excellent suspicion. He says : 

"Thus the mystery was completed by the Savior 
in order that, perfection being completed through 

all things, and in all things, by 
Words of Titus Christ, all universally shall be made 
of Bostra. one through Christ and in Christ. " 

He says again : * ' The very abyss of 
torment is indeed the place of chastisement, but it 
is not eternal (aionion) nor did it exist in the orig- 
inal constitution of nature. It was afterwards, as 
a remedy for sinners, that it might cure them. 
And the punishments are holy, as they are reme- 
dial and salutary in their effect on transgressors; 
for they are inflicted, not to preserve them in their 
wickedness, but to make them cease from their 
wickedness. The anguish of their suffering com- 
pels them to break off their vices. * * * If 
death were an evil, blame would rightfully fall on 
him who appointed it. " 2 

Ambrose of Milan. 
Ambrose of Milan, A. D. 340-398, says: "What 
then hinders our believing that he who is beaten 
small as the dust is not annihilated, but is changed 
for the better; so that, instead of an earthly man, he 
is made a spiritual man, and our believing that he 
who is destroyed, is so destroyed that all taint is re- 
moved, and there remains but what is pure and 
clean. And in God's saying of the adversaries of 

nrillemont, p. 671. Quoted by Lardner, Vol. Ill, p. 273. 

2 Migne, Vol. XVIII, p. U18. Observe here that aionios is used in the 
sense of endless; also that the word rendered "abyss" is the word translated 
'bottomless pit" in Revelation. 



246 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Jerusalem, ' They shall be as though they were not,' 
you are to understand they shall exist substantially, 
and as converted, but shall not exist as enemies. 

* * * God gave death, not as a penalty, but as a 
remedy ; death was given for a remedy as the end of 
evils." * * * " How shall the sinner exist in the 
future, seeing the place of sin cannot be of long con- 
tinuance? " 3 * * * Because God's image is that 
of the one God, it like Him starts from one, and is 
diffused to infinity. And, once again, from an in- 
finite number all things return into one as into their 
end, because God is both beginning and end of all 
things. 4 * * * How then, shall (all things) be 
subject to Christ? In this very way in which the 
Lord Himself said. ' Take my yoke upon you, ' for 
it is not the untamed who bear the yoke, but the 
humble and gentle, * * * so that in Jesus's name 
every knee shall bend. * * * Is this subjection 
of Christ now completed ? Not at all. Because the 
subjection of Christ consists not in few, but in all. 

* * * Christ will be subject to God in us by 
means of the obedience of all ; * * * when vices 
having been cast away, and sin reduced to submis- 
sion, one spirit of all people, in one sentiment, shall 
with one accord begin to cleave to God, then God 
will be all in all , * * * when all then shall have be- 
lieved and done the will of God, Christ will be all and 
in all ; and when Christ shall be all. in all, God will be 
all in all. * * * * At present he is overall by his 
power, but it is necessary that he be in all by their 



*On Ps. xxxvii. 
<Epis. Lib, I. 
*De Fide. 



ADDITIONAL AUTHORITIES. 247 

free will: 6 * * * So the Son of man came to 
save that which was lost, that is, all, for, 'As in 
Adam all died, so, too, in Christ shall all be made 
alive. ' " 7 u For ; if the guilty die, who have been un- 
willing to leave the path of sin, even against their 
will they still gain, not of nature but of fault, that 
they may sin no more. " * * * "Death is not 
bitter; but to the sinner it is bitter, and yet life is 
more bitter, for it is a deadlier thing to live in sin 
than to die in sin, because the sinner as long as he 
lives increases in sin, but if he dies he ceases to 
sin. " 8 

Cave says that Ambrose quotes and adapts many 
of the writings of the Greek Fathers, particularly 
Origen; and Jerome declares that Ambrose was in- 
debted to Didymus for the most of his de Spiritu 
Sanctu. Both these, it will be noted, were Univer- 
salists. Augustine tells us that every day after his 
morning devotions Ambrose studied the Scriptures, 
chiefly by the aid of the Greek commentators, and 
especially of Origen and Hippolytus, and of Didymus 
and Basil. 9 Three of these at least were Universal- 
ists. "Perhaps his most original book is 'On the 
Blessing of Death, ' in which he takes a singularly 
mild view of the punishment of the wicked, ex- 
presses his belief in a purifying fire, and argues that 
whatever that punishment be, it is a state distinctly 
preferable to a sinful life. His eschatology was 
deeply influenced by the larger hopes of Origen. " lc 

6 On Ps. lxii. 

7 On Luke. xv. 3. 

8 Blessing of Death: Ch. vii. 

e Conf. vi ,3, Ep. xlvii. 1. 

i°Farrar: Lives of the Fathers, II. p. 144. 



248 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

The language of Ambrose in his comments on 
Ps. cxviii, is as follows: " Dives in the Gospel, al- 
though a sinner, is pressed with penal agonies, that 
he may escape the sooner." 11 * * * Again; 
1 ' Those who do not come to the first, but are re- 
served for the second resurrection, shall be burned 
till they fill up the times between the first and sec- 
ond resurrection, or should they not have done so, 
will remain longer in punishment. " 

The Ambrosiaster is by an unknown author, an- 
ciently erroneously supposed to be Ambrose, as it 
was bound with the works of this father. On I Cor. 
xv : 28, the Ambrosiaster says: "This is implied 
in the Savior's subjecting himself to the Father; 
this is involved in God*s being all in all, namely, 
when every creature learns that Christ is his head, 
and that God the Father is the head of Christ, then 
God the Father is all in all. This implies that 
every creature thinks one and the same thing, so 
that every tongue of celestials, terrestials and infer- 
nals shall confess God as the great One from whom 
all things are derived. " This sentiment he avows 
in other passages. 

Serapion, the companion of Athanasius, A. D. 
346, says of evil: "It is of itself nothing, nor can 
it in itself exist, or exist always; but it is in process 
of vanishing, and by vanishing proved to be unable 
to exist. " u 

Macarius Magnes, A. D. 370, says that death 
was ordained at the first, "in order that, by the dis- 



n Ideo Dives ille in Evangelio, licet peccator, poenaiibus torquetur 
aerumnis, ut citicus possit evadere. 
12 Adv. Man., Ch. w. 



ADDITIONAL AUTHORITIES. 249 

solution of the body, all the sin proceeding from the 
connection (of soul and body) should be totally de- 
stroyed. " 13 

Marius Victorinus, A. D. 360, was born in Af- 
rica, and was a famous rhetorician, whose writings 
abound with expressions of the faith of Universalism. 
On I Cor. xv : 28, he says: "All things shall be ren- 
dered spiritual at the consummation of the world. 
At the consummation all things shall be one. 14 
* * * Therefore all things converted to him shall 
become one, i. e., spiritual; through the Son all 
things shall be made one, for all things are by him, 
for all things that exist are one, though they be dif- 
ferent. For the body of the entire universe is not 
like a mere heap, which becomes a body, only by 
the contact of its particles ; but it is a body chiefly in 
its several parts being closely and mutually bound 
together — it forms a continuous chain. For the chain 
is this, God: Jesus: the Spirit: the intellect : the soul: 
the angelic host: and lastly, all subordinate bodily 
existences." On Eph. i, iv: "Thus the mystery 
was completed by the Savior in order that, perf action 
having been completed throughout all things, and in 
all things by Christ, all universally should be made 
one through Christ and in Christ. * * * And 
because he (Christ) is the life, he is that by whom 
all things have been made, and for whom all things 
have been made, for all things cleansed by him re- 
turn into eternal life. " 

Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers, (died, A. D. 368), is 



13 Not. etFrag..xix. 

"Adv. Arium, lib. 1: 25; Migne, viii, p. 1059. 



250 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

said by Jerome to have translated nearly 40,000 
lines of Origen. On Luke xv: 4, he 
.. says: " This one sheep (lost) is man, 

and by one man the entire race is to 
be understood; the ninety and nine 
are the heavenly angels * * * and by us (man- 
kind) who are all one, the number of the heavenly 
church is to be filled up. And therefore it is that 
every creature awaits the revelation of the sons of 
God." On Psalm, lxix: 32, 33: "Even the abode of 
hell is to praise God. " Also, " 'As thou hast given 
him power over all flesh in order that he should give 
eternal life to all that thou hast given him,' * * * 
so the Father gave all things, and the Son accepted 
all things, * * * and honored by the Father 
was to honor the Father, and to employ the power 
received in giving eternity of life to all flesh. * * * 
Now this is life eternal that they may know thee." 15 
John Cassian, A. D. 390-440. This celebrated 
man was educated in the monastery in Bethlehem, 
and was the founder of two monasteries in Marseilles. 
He wrote much, and drew the fire of Augustine, 
whose doctrines he strenuously assailed. Neander 
declares of him, that his views of the divine love ex- 
tended to all men, ' * which wills the salvation of all, 
and refers everything to this ; even subordinating the 
punishment of the wicked to this simple end. " 16 
Ueberweg says Cassian "could not admit that 
God would save only a portion of the human race, 
and that Christ died only for the elect." Hagenbach 
states that the erroneous idea that God "would 

"De Trin. lib. IX. 

WHist. Christ Ch., ii: 623. Hist. Christ. Dogmas, ii: 877, 



ADDITIONAL AUTHORITIES. 251 

save only a few " is in the opinion of Cassian ingene 
sacrilegium, a great sacrilege or blasphemy. Nean- 
der, in his " History of Dogmas," remarks: " The 
practically Christian guided him in treating the doc- 
trines of faith ; he admitted nothing which was not 
suited to satisfy thoroughly the religious wants of 
men. * * * The idea of divine justice in the de- 
termination of man's lot after the first transgression 
did not preponderate in Cassian's writings as in Au- 
gustine's, but the idea of a disciplinary divine love, 
by the leadings of which men are to be led to repent- 
ance. He appeals also to the mysteriousness of 
God's ways, not as concerns predestination, but the 
variety of the leadings by which God leads different 
individuals to salvation. In no instance, however, 
can divine grace operate independently of the free 
self determination of man ; as the husbandman must 
do his part, but all this avails nothing without the 
divine blessing, so man must do his part, yet this 
profits nothing without divine grace. " To which T. 
B. Thayer, D. D., adds in the " Universalist Quar- 
terly" : " It is a fact worth noting in this connection, 
that Cassianus went to Constantinople in A. D. 403, 
where he listened to the celebrated Chrysostom, by 
whom he was ordained as Deacon. Speaking of 
Chrysostom, Neander says that but for the necessity 
of opposing those who made too light of sin and its 
retributions and would fain reason away the doctrine 
of eternal punishment, ' his mild and amiable spirit 
might not otherwise be altogether disinclined to the 
doctrine of a universal restoration, with which he 
must have become acquainted at an earlier period, 
from being a disciple of Diodorus of Tarsus.' 



252 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

* * * This justifies the remark of Neander that 
we may perhaps * discern in these traits of Cassianus 
the spirit of the great Chrysostom, with whom he 
long lived in the capacity of deacon, and whose dis- 
ciple he delighted to call himself.' " 

Theodoret, the Blessed, was born A. D. 387, and 
died 458. He was ordained Bishop of Cyrus in 
Syria, 420. He was a pupil of 
Theodore of Mopsuestia, and was 
also a student of eloquence and sa- 
cred literature of Chrysostom. Dr. 
Schaff calls his continuation of Eusebius's Eccle- 
siastical History most valuable. Neander, Mur- 
doch, and Mosheim rank him high in learning, elo- 
quence and goodness. He illustrates one of the 
many contradictions of the assertions of merely sec- 
tarian scholars. Though Dr. Shedd says that " the 
only exception to the belief in the eternity of future 
punishment in the ancient church appears in the 
Alexandrian school, " yet, Theodoret, Theodore, 
Diodore and others were all of the Antiochan 
school. Dr. Orello Cone first called the attention 
of our church to this father, who is not even men- 
tioned by Dr. Ballou, in his ''Ancient History of 
Universalism, " and we quote from his article, copied 
in part from "The New York Christian Ambassa- 
dor" into "The Universalist Quarterly," April, 
1866. Dr. Cone says that Theodoret regarded the 
resurrection as the elevation and quickening of man's 
entire nature. ' ' He gives this higher spiritual view 
of the resurrection {anastasis) in his commentary 
on Eph. i: 10, 'For through the dispensation or in- 
carnation of Christ the nature of men arises, ' anista, 



ADDITIONAL AUTHORITIES. 253 

or is resurrected, 'and puts on incorruption. ' He 
does not say the bodies of men, but the nature 
(phusis) is resurrected. " 

Theodoret says, on "Gathering all things in 
Christ : " ' ' And the visible creation shall be liberated 
from corruption, and shall attain incorruption, and 
the inhabitants of the invisible worlds shall live in 
perpetual joy, for grief and sadness and groaning 
shall be done away." * * * On the universal 
atonement : — ' 'Teaching that he would free from the 
power of death not only his own body, but at the 
same time the entire nature of the human race, he 
presently adds: 'And I, if I be lifted from the 
earth will draw all men unto me ; ' for I will not suf- 
fer what I have undertaken to raise the body only, 
but I will fully accomplish the resurrection to all 
men. * * * He has paid the debt for us, and 
blotted out the handwriting that was against us, 
* * * and having done these things, he quick- 
ened together with himself the entire nature of men. " 

He formed his Christian system on Theodore's, 
and on that of Diodore of Tarsus, both Universal- 
ists. Allin says, he ' ' was perhaps the most famous, 
and certainly the most learned teacher of his age ; 
uniting to a noble intellect a character and accom- 
plishments equally noble. " He published a defense 
of Diodore and Theodore, unfortunately lost. On 
I Cor. xv : 28, Theodoret says: "But in the future 
life corruption ceasing and immortality being con- 
ferred, the passions have no place, and these being 
removed, no kind of sin is committed. So from that 
time God is all in all, when all, freed from sin, and 
turned to him, shall have no inclination to evil. " On 



254 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Eph. i: 23, he says: " In the present life God is in 
all, for his nature is without limits, but is not all in 
all. But in the coming life, when mortality is at an 
end and immortality granted, and sin has no longer 
any place, God will be all in all. 17 For the Lord, 
who loves man, punishes medicinally, that he may 
check the course of impiety." 

Gregory the Great says that the Roman church 
refused to acknowledge Theodoret's History because 

he praised Theodore of Mopsuestia, 
Works of and insisted that he was a great doc- 

Theodoret. tor in the church. Theodoret says 

that Theodore was "the teacher of 
all the churches, and the opponent of all the sects of 
heresy, " so that in his opinion Universalism was not 
heretical. 

Evagrius Ponticus, A. D. 390. The works of 
this eminent saint and scholar were destroyed by 

the Fifth General Council that con- 

n ' ■ D *• demned him — though not as a Uni- 
Evagnus Ponticus. & 

versalist — a hundred and fifty years 
after his death. The council anathe- 
matized him with Didymus. It is most apparent 
that the great multitude of Christians must have ac- 
cepted views which were so generally advocated and 
unchallenged during those early years, by the best 
and greatest of the fathers. Evagrius is said by 
Jerome in his epistle to Ctesiphon against the Pela- 
gians, to have been an Origenist. He wrote three 
books, the " Saint" or "Gnostic," the "Monk, "and 
the "Refutation." 

"Migne, lxxxii, p. 860. 



ADDITIONAL AUTHORITIES. 255 

Cyril of Alexandria (A. D. 412) says: "Trav- 
ersing the lowest recesses of the infernal regions, 
after that he (Christ) had preached to the spirits 
there, he led forth the captives in his strength." 18 
" Now when sin has been destroyed, how should it 
be but that death too, should wholly perish?" * * * 
' ' Through Christ has been saved the holy multitude 
of the fathers, nay, the whole human race altogether, 
which was earlier in time (than Christ's death) for 
he died for all, and the death of all was done away 
in him." 19 

Rufinus, A. D. 345-410, wrote an elaborate de- 
fense of Origen, and in the preface to '•' De Princi- 
piis " he declares that he excised from that work of 
Origen all that was " discordant with our (the ac- 
cepted Christian) belief. " As the work still abounds 
in expressions of Universalism, not only his sympa- 
thy with that belief, but also the fact that it was then 
the prevailing Christian belief can not be questioned. 
Huet says that he taught the temporary duration of 
punishment. 20 

Dr. Ballou quotes Domitian, Bishop of Galatia, 
as probably a Universalist (A. D. 546), who is re- 
ported by Facundus to have written a book in which 
he declares that those who condemned Origen have 
"condemned all the saints who were before him, and 
who have been after him." 21 

Diodore, Bishop of Tarsus, from A. D. 378 to 
394, was of the Antiochan or Syrian school. He op- 
posed Origen on some subjects, but agreed with his 

18 Homilia. Pasch. xx. Migne, lxxvii. 
* 9 Glaph. in Ex., lib. II. 
20 Origen. II, p, 160. 
ai Anc. Hist. Univ., p. 265. 



256 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Universalism. He says: " For the wicked there are 
punishments, not perpetual, how- 

Diodore of Tarsus. ever > lest the ^mortality prepared 
for them should be a disadvantage, 
but they are to be punished for a 
brief period according to the amount of malice in 
their works. They shall therefore suffer punishment 
for a short space, but immortal blessedness having 
no end awaits them * * * the penalties to be in- 
flicted for their many and grave sins are very far sur- 
passed by the magnitude of the mercy to be showed 
them. The resurrection, therefore, is regarded as a 
blessing not only to the good, but also to the evil. " a 
The same authority affirms that many Nestorian 
bishops taught the same doctrine. The * ' Diction- 
ary of Christian Biography" observes: " Dio- 
dorus of Tarsus taught that the penalty of sin 
is not perpetual, but issues in the blessedness of 
immortality, and (he) was followed by Stephanus, 
Bishop of Edessa, and Salomo of Bassora, and 
Isaac of Nineveh." " Even those who are tortured 
in Gehenna are under the discipline of the divine 
charity. " ' * And they were followed in their turn by 
Georgius of Arbela, and Ebed Jesu of Soba. " Dio- 
dore contended that God's mercy would punish the 
wicked less than their sins deserved, inasmuch as his 
mercy gave the good more than they deserved. He 
denied that Deity would bestow immortality for the 
purpose of prolonging and perpetuating suffering. 
Diodore and Theodore, the first, Chrysostom's 
teacher, and the second his fellow-student, were 

22Asseir,ani Bib. Orientalis, III, p. 324. 



ADDITIONAL AUTHORITIES. 257 

really the pioneers in teaching Scripture by help of 
history, criticism and philology. 23 They may be re- 
garded as the forerunners of modern interpretation. 
Like so many others of the ancient writings Diodore's 
works have perished, and we have only a few quota- 
tions from them, contained in the works of others. 
But we have enough to qualify him to occupy an 
honorable place among the Universalists of the 
Fourth Century. 

Even Dr. Pusey is compelled to admit the Uni- 
versalism of Diodore of Tarsus, and Theodore of 
Mopsuestia. He says, quoting from Salomo of Bas- 
sora, 1 2 22, some eight hundred years after their death : 
"The two writers use different arguments and have 
different theories. Theodorus rests his on Holy 
Scripture, ' until thou hast paid the uttermost far- 
thing,' and 'the many, and few stripes,' and at- 
tributes the amendment of those who have done 
ill all their lives to the discovery of their mistake. 
Diodorus says that punishment must not be per- 
petual, lest the immortality prepared for them be 
useless to them ; he twice repeats that punishment, 
though varied according to their deserts, would be 
for a short time. His ground was his conviction 
that since God's rewards so far exceed the deserts 
of the good, the like mercy would be shown to the 
evil." 24 

Though somewhat later than the projected limits 
of this work, two or three authors may be named. 

Macarius is said by Evagrius to have been 
ejected from his see, A. D. 552, for maintaining the 

asRobertson's Hist. Christ. Ch., I, p. 455. 
a*What is of Faith, p. 231. 



258 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

opinions of O rig en. Whether universal restitution 
was among them is uncertain. 

Peter Chrysologus, A. D. 433, Bishop of Ra- 
venna, in a sermon on the Good Shepherd, says 
the lost sheep represents "the 

nu~ «, i~„ . whole human race lost in Adam, " 

Chrysologus. 

and that Christ " followed the one, 
seeks the one, in order that in the 
one he may restore all. " 

Stephan Bar-sudaili, Abbot of Edessa, in Meso- 
potamia, at the end of the Fifth Century, taught Uni- 
versalism, — the termination of all punishments in 
the future world, and their purifying character. The 
fallen angels are to receive mercy, and all things are 
to be restored, so that God may be all in all. 25 He 
was at the head of a monastery. Attacked as a her- 
etic he left Edessa and repaired to Palestine, which 
in those days seems to have been the refuge of 
those who desired freedom of opinion. How many 
might have sympathized with him in Mesopotamia 
or in Palestine cannot be known. 

Maximus, the Confessor. As late as the Seventh 

Century, in spite of the power of Roman tyranny 

and Pagan error, the truth survived. 

.or, rc~ Maximus — A. D. 1580-662 — was sec- 
Maximus. 580-662 ^ ° 

retary of the Emperor Heraclius, 

and confidential friend of Pope Mar- 
tin I. He opposed the Emperor Constans II, in his 
attempts to control the religious convictions of his 
subjects, and was banished, A. D. 653, and died of 
ill treatment. He was both scholar and saint. 
Neander says: 

«Assemani Bibl. Orient., II, p. 291. 



ADDITIONAL AUTHORITIES. 259 

"The fundamental ideas of Maximus seem to 
lead to the doctrine of a final universal restoration, 
which in fact is intimately connected also with the 
system of Gregory of Nyssa, to which he most 
closely adhered. Yet he was too much fettered by 
the church system of doctrine distinctly to express 
anything of the sort. " Neander adds, that in his 
aphorisms ' ' the reunion of all rational essences with 
God is established as the final end." "Him who 
wholly unites all things in the end of the ages, or 
in eternity. " Ueberweg states that "Maximus 
taught that God had revealed himself through nature 
and by his Word. The incarnation of God in Christ 
was the culmination of revelation, and would there- 
fore have taken place even if man had not fallen. 
The Universe will end in the union of all things 
with God." 



XIX. 

THE DETERIORATION OF CHRISTIAN 
THOUGHT. 

The great transition from the Christianity of the 
Apostles to the pseudo-Christianity of the patriarchs 
and emperors — the transformation 
Transition of of Christianity to Churchianity — may 

Christianity. be said to have begun with Con- 

stantine, at the beginning of the 
Fourth Century. Its relations to the temporal 
power experienced an entire change. Heathenism 
surrendered to it. As the stones of the heathen 
temples were rebuilt into Christian churches, so the 
Pagan principles held by the masses modified and 
corrupted the religion of Christ; while the worldli- 
ness of secular interests derived from the union of 
church and state, exerted a debasing influence, and 
the Christianity of the Catacombs and of Origen be- 
came the church of the popes, of the Inquisition, and 
of the Middle Ages. 

"The writers of the Fourth Century generally 
contradict those of the Second, who were in part wit- 
nesses, or reported credible evidence and plausible 
traditions, whereas those later fathers were only 
critics, and most of them very indifferent and biased 
ones. For they often proceed from systems, histor- 
ical and doctrinal, which strongly impair their quali- 
fications for being judges. " There seems an entire 

260 



DETERIORATION OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 261 

change in the church after the Nicene Council. 
"The Anti-Nicene age was the World against the 
Church; the Post- Nicene age is the history of the 
World in the Church. As an antagonist the World 
was powerless; as an ally it became dangerous and 
its influence disastrous." 1 

"From the time of Constantine, " says Schaff, 
" church discipline declines; the whole Roman world 
having become nominally Christian, and the host of 
hypocritical professors multiplying beyond all con- 
trol." It was during Constantine's reign that, 
among other foreign corruptions, monasticism came 
into Christianity, from the Hindoo religions and other 
sources, and gave rise to those ascetic organizations 
so foreign to the spirit of the author of our religion, 
and so productive of error and evil. Perhaps the de- 
terioration of Christian doctrine and life may be 
dated from the edict of Milan (A. D. 313), when 
" unhappily, the church also entered on an altogether 
new career — that of patronage and state protection. 
That which it was about to gain in material power 
it would lose in moral force and independence." It 
is probable that the beginning of the conventual life 
of women from which grew the nunneries and con- 
vents that covered Christendom in the succeeding 
centuries, was with Helen, the mother of the Em- 
peror Constantine, who A. D. 331 closed a pious 
life at the age of eighty years. She was accustomed 
to gather the virgins of the church to repasts, serv- 
ing them with her own hands at table and praying in 
their company. 

Robertson says: " Theophilus succeeded Tim- 

1 Hipp. and his Age. 



262 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

othy at Alexandria A. D. 385, and held the see till 
412. He was able, bold, crafty, unscrupulous, cor- 
rupt, rapacious, domineering. In the first contro- 
versy between Jerome and Rufinus he had acted the 
creditable part of a mediator. His own inclinations 
were undoubtedly in favor of Origen ; he had even 
deposed a bishop named Paul for his hostility to that 
teacher, but he now found it expedient to adopt a 
different line of conduct. " Jerome and Theophilus 
subsequently joined hands and united in a bitter and 
relentless warfare against the great Alexandrian. 
There seems to have been very little principle in the 
course they pursued. 

Jerome — A. D. 331-420 — was one of the ablest of 

the fathers of the century in which he lived — " the 

most learned except Origen, "up to 

„* ,„„ his time. He wrote in Latin, and 
Jerome — 331-420. ' 

was contemporary with Augustine, 

but did not accept all the Paganism 
of the great corruptor of Christianity. He stood in 
line with his Oriental predecessors. At first he was 
an enthusiastic partisan of Origen, but later, when 
opposition to the great Alexandrian set in, he be- 
came an equally violent opponent. Schaff says he 
was a great trimmer and time server, and at length 
seemed to acquiesce in the growing influence of Au- 
gustinianism. Jerome had "originally belonged, 
like the friend of his youth, Rufinus, and John, 
Bishop of Jerusalem, to the warmest admirers of the 
great Alexandrian father. 2 But attacked as he now 
was, with remonstrances from different sides, he be- 

2 Canon Freemantle in Diet. Christ. Biog. Vol. III., 1 Art. Hieronymus. 



DETERIORATION OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 263 

gan out of anxiety for his own reputation for ortho- 
doxy, to separate himself with the utmost care from 
the heresies with which he was charged." One of 
Origen's works, in the handwriting of Pamphilus, 
came into Jerome's possession, who says, owning it, 
he "owns the wealth of Croesus; it is signed, as it 
were, with the very blood of the martyr. " 

Jerome translated fourteen homilies of Origen on 
Jeremiah, and fourteen on Ezekiel, and quotes 
Didymus as saying that Origen was the greatest 
teacher of the church since St. Paul. During his 
residence in Rome Jerome highly praised Origen, 
but soon after, when he found himself accused of 
heresy for so doing, he declared that he had only 
read him as he had read other heretics. In a letter 
to Vigilantius he says: " I praise him as an inter- 
preter, not as a dogmatic teacher; for his genius, not 
for his faith; as a philosopher, not as an apostle. * 
* * If you believe me, I never was an Origenist ; 
if you do not believe me, I have now ceased to be 
one." 3 But when in Csesarea he borrowed the manu- 
script of Origen's Hexapla and collated it, and in 
Alexandria he passed a month with the great Uni- 
versalist, the blind Didymus. 

It is curious to notice, however, that Jerome does 
not oppose Origen's universal restoration, but erro- 
neously accuses him of advocating the universal 
equality of the restored — of holding that Gabriel 
and the devil, Paul and Caiaphas, the virgin and the 
prostitute, will be alike in the immortal world. The 
idea of the universal restoration of mankind, divested 

»Epist. xxxiii. Migne Vol. XXII. 



264 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

of pre-existence, universal equality, the salvability 
of evil spirits, etc., does not seem to have been much 
objected to in the days of Jerome, even by those 
who did not accept it. 

Jerome's later language is: " And though Origen 
declares that no rational being will be lost, and gives 
penitence to the evil one, what is 
Jerome's Politic that to us who believe that the evil 
Course. one and his satellites, and all the 

wicked will perish eternally, and that 
Christians, if they have been cut off in sin, shall after 
punishment be saved. " This, however, was after the 
cautious and politic churchman had begun to hedge 
in order to conciliate the growing influence of Augus- 
tinianism. And the words italicised above show that 
his endless punishment was very elastic. 

Jerome uses the word rendered eternal in the 
Bible (aionios) in the sense of limited duration, as 
that Jerusalem was burnt with aionian fire by Ha- 
drian; that Israel experienced aionian woe, etc. In 
his commentary on Isaiah his language is: 

1 c Those who think that the punishment of the 
wicked will one day, after many ages, have an end, 
rely on these testimonies: Rom. xi. 25; Gal. iii. 
22; Mic. vii. 9; Isa. xii. 1; Ps. xxx. 20," which he 
quotes, and adds: " And this we ought to leave to 
the knowledge of God alone, whose torments, no less 
than his compassion, are in due measure, and who 
knows how and how long to punish. This only let 
us say as suiting our human frailty, ' Lord, rebuke 
me not in thy fury, nor chasten me in thine anger. ' " 4 

*Plumptre, Diet. Christ Biog. II, Art. " Eschatology." 



DETERIORATION OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 265 

Commenting on Isaiah xxiv, he says: " This seems 
to favor those friends of mine who grant the grace of 
repentance to the devil and to demons after many 
ages, that they too shall be visited after a time. * * * 
Human frailty cannot know the judgment of God, 
nor venture to form an opinion of the greatness and 
the measure of his punishment. " Jerome frequently 
exposes his sympathy with the doctrine of restora- 
tion, as when he says: ' ' Israel and all heretics, be- 
cause they had the works of Sodom and Gomorrah, 
are overthrown like Sodom and Gomorrah, that they 
may be set free like a brand snatched from the burn- 
ing. And this is the meaning of the prophet's words, 
4 Sodom shall be restored as of old, ' that he who by 
his vice is as an inhabitant of Sodom, after the works 
of Sodom have been burnt in him, may be restored to 
his ancient state. " 5 

In quoting from this father, Allin says, in Uni- 
versalism Asserted: " Nor are these isolated in- 
stances; I have found nearly one hundred passages 
in his works (and there are doubtless others) indi- 
cating Jerome's sympathy with Universalism. Fur- 
ther, we should note that when towards the year 
400 A. D., Jerome took part with Epiphanius and the 
disreputable Theophilus against Ori gen (whom he had 
hitherto extravagantly praised), he, as Huet points 
out, kept a significant silence on the question of hu- 
man restoration. ' Though you adduce, ' says Huet, 
1 six hundred testimonies, you thereby only prove 
that he changed his opinion. ' But did he ever change 
his opinion? And if so, how far? Thus in his ' Epis. 

5 Com. cm Amos. 



266 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

ad Avit.,' where he goes at length into Origen's 
errors, he says nothing of the larger hope ; and when 
charged with Origenism he refers time over to his 
commentaries on Ephesians, which teach the most 
outspoken Universalism. As a specimen of his 
praise of Origen, he says, in a letter to Paula that 
Origen was blamed, ' not on account of the novelty of 
his doctrines, not on account of heresy, as now mad 
dogs pretend, but from jealousy, ' so that to call Ori- 
gen a heretic is the part of a mad dog! Note this, 
from the most orthodox Jerome." 

Translating Origen's " Homilies, " which affirm 
Universalism continually, he said in his preface, that 
Origen was only inferior to the Apos- 
A Miserable Story, ties— "alteram^ post apostolum ec- 
clesiarum magistrum. " The man- 
ner in which he retracted these 
sentiments, and became the detractor and enemy of 
the man to whom he had admitted his indebtedness 
is disgraceful to his memory. Farrar accurately 
calls the record of his behavior " a miserable story." 
Jerome's morbid dread of being held to be heretical, 
led him, it is feared, to deny some of his real opin- 
ions, and to violently attack those who held them, 
in order to divert attention from himself. 6 

A few of his expressions are here given out of the 
many quotable. On Eph. iv ; 1 6 : "In the end of 
things, the whole body which had been dissipated 
and torn into divers parts shall be restored. Let us 
understand the whole number of rational creatures 
under the figure of a single rational animal. Let us 

6 He calls Origen "that immortal intellect." 



DETERIORATION OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 267 

imagine this animal to be torn so that no bone ad- 
heres to bone, nor nerve to nerve. * * . * In the 
restitution of all things when Christ the true physi- 
cian shall have come to heal the body of the univer- 
sal church * * * every one * * * shall re- 
ceive his proper place. * * * What I mean is, 
the fallen angel will begin to be that which he was 
created, and man who has been expelled from Para- 
dise will be once more restored to the tilling of Para- 
dise. * * * These things then will take place uni- 
versally."* * * On Mic. v:8: "Death shall come 
as a visitor to the impious ; it will not be perpetual 
it will not annihilate them ; but will prolong its visit 
till the impiety which is in them shall be consumed. " 
* * * On Eph. iv: 13, he says: "The question 
should arise who those are of whom he says that they 
all shall come into the unity of the faith? Does he 
mean all men, or all the saints, or all rational beings? 
He appears to me to be speaking of all men." On 
Johnxvii: 21: "In the end and consummation of 
the Universe all are to be restored into their original 
harmonious state, and we all shall be made one body 
and be united once more into a perfect man, and the 
prayer of our Savior shall be fulfilled that all 
may be one. " In his homily on Jonah he says: 
"Most persons (plerique, very many), regard the 
story of Jonah as teaching the ultimate forgiveness 
of all rational creatures, even the devil. " This shows 
us the prevalence of the doctrine in the Fourth Cen- 
tury. His words are: "The apostate angels, and 
the prince of this world, and Lucifer, the morning 
star, though now ungovernable, licentiously wander- 
ing about, and plunging themselves into the depths 



268 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

of sin, shall in the end, embrace the happy dominion 
of Christ and his saints. " Gieseler quotes the fol- 
lowing sentence from Jerome's comments on Gal. 
v: 22: "No rational creature before God will per- 
ish forever," and from this language the historian 
not only classes Jerome as a Universalis^ but con- 
siders it proof that the doctrine was then prevalent 
in the West. "The learned, the famous Jerome 
(A. D. 380-390), was at this time a Universalist of 
Origen's school. He was, indeed, a Latin writer; 
but it may be more proper to introduce him with the 
Greek fathers, since he completed his theological ed- 
ucation in the East, and there spent the larger part 
of his manhood and old age. A follower of Origen, 
from whose works he borrowed without reserve, he 
nevertheless modified his scheme of universal sal- 
vation with little amendment. * * At a later period 
he was led, by a theological and personal quarrel, 
to take sides against this doctrine." 7 

John Chrysostom, A. D. 347-407, was born of 
Christian parentage in Antioch, and became the 
golden-mouthed orator and one of the most cele- 
brated of the fathers. He was the intimate friend 
of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Diodore of Tarsus, 
and a pupil of the latter for six years. He was no 
controversialist, his works are chiefly expository and 
hortatory. His praise of his Universalist friends, 
Theodore and Diodore, should predispose us to re- 
gard him as cherishing their view of human destiny, 
notwithstanding his lurid descriptions of the horrors 
of future torments. 

*Univ. Quar, May, 1838. 



DETERIORATION OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 269 

In answer to the question, " Whether hell fire 
have any end, " Chrysostom says, "Christ declares 
that it hath no end. Well, " he adds, 
Chrysostom's " I know that a chill comes over you 

Views - on hearing these things, but what am 

I to do? For this is God's own com- 
mand, * * * that it hath no end Christ hath de- 
clared. Paul also saith, in pointing out the eternity 
of punishment, that the sinner shall pay the penalty 
of destruction, and that forever. " 8 The reasonable- 
ness of the apparently disproportioned penalty he 
feebly argues. A specimen of the utter inadequacy 
of his argument is seen where he comments on the 
language, "If any man's work be burned he shall 
suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so as 
by fire." He says it means " that while the sinner's 
works shall perish, he shall be preserved in fire for 
the purpose of torment." And he gives the very 
details: "A river of fire, and a poisonous worm, 
and darkness interminable, and undying tortures." 9 
And yet he asks with a significant emphasis that 
seems to preclude the thought of the sinner's irreme- 
diable suffering : ' ' Tell me on what account do you 
mourn for him that is departed? Is it because he 
was wicked? But for that very reason you ought to 
give thanks, because his evil works are put a stop to. " 
" God is equally to be praised when he chastises, and 
when he frees from chastisement. For both spring 
from goodness. * * * It is right, then, to praise 
him equally both for placing Adam in Paradise, and 
for expelling him ; and to give thanks not alone for 

8Hom. IX on I Cor. iii: 12-16. 
9 Hom. XI on I Cor. iv: 3. 



270 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

the kingdom, but for Gehenna as well. * * * 
Christ went to the utterly black and joyless portion 
of Hades, and turned it into heaven, transferring all 
its wealth, the race of man, into his royal treasury." 10 

Dr. Schaff informs us that "Nitzsch includes 

Gregory Nazianzen and possibly Chrysostom among 

Universalists, and says that Chrysos- 

Neander and torn praised Origen and Diodorus, 

Schaff. an( ^ ^hat ^ s comments on I. Cor. xv. 

28, looked toward an apokatastasis." 

Dr. Beecher ranks him among the "esoteric 
believers." Neander thinks he believed in Univer- 
salism, but felt that the opposite doctrine was nec- 
essary to alarm the multitude. On the words, "At 
the name of Jesus every knee shall bow," Chrysos- 
tom says: "What does this mean of 'things in 
heaven, on earth, and under the earth?' It means 
the whole world, and angels, and men, and demons. 
Or, it signifies both the holy and sinners." A pupil 
of Diodore, of Tarsus, for six years, and a fellow- 
student with Theodore of Mopsuestia, both Univer- 
salists, he cannot be regarded as otherwise than in 
sympathy with them on this theme of themes. He 
must have been one of those esoteric believers else- 
where described, for he says according to Neander, 
that he had found the doctrine of endless punishment 
necessary to the welfare of sinners, and on that ac- 
count had preached it. The influence of the Alex- 
andrians was waning, and the heathen environment 
was leavening Christianity, which soon assumed a 
phase wholly foreign to its primal purity. 

ioSermonxxxiv; on Ps. cxlviii; Ser. xxx. 



XX. 

AUGUSTINE— DETERIORATION 
CONTINUED. 

Aurelius Augustinus was born in Tagaste, 
Numidia, November 13, 354, and died in 420. He 
was the great fountain of error destined to adulter- 
ate Christianity, and change its character for long 
ages. In disposition and spirit he was wholly un- 
like the amiable and learned fathers who proclaimed 
an earlier and purer faith. He fully developed that 
change in opinion which was destined to influence 
Christianity for many centuries. He himself informs 
us that he spent his youth in the brothels of Carthage 
after a mean, thieving boyhood. x He cast off the 
mother of his illegitimate son, Adeodatus, whom 
he ought to have married, as his sainted mother, 
Monica, urged him to do. It is an interesting 
indication of the Latin type of piety to know that his 
mother allowed him to live at home during his 
shameless life, but that when he adopted the Man- 
ichsean heresy she forbade him her house. And 
afterward, when he became "orthodox," though still 
living immorally, she received him in her home. His 
life was destitute of the claims of that paternal rela- 
tion on which society rests, and which our Lord 
makes the fundamental fact of his religion, Father- 
hood. He transferred to God the characteristics of 

Confessions, III, Chap, i-iii. 

271 



272 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

semi- Pagan kings, and his theology was a hybrid born 
of the Roman Code of Law and Pagan Mythology. 

The contrast between Origen's system and Au- 
gustine's is as that of light and darkness; with the 
first, Fatherhood, Love, Hope, Joy, 
Augustine and Or- Salvation ; with the other, Ven- 
igen Contrasted. geance, Punishment, Sin, Eternal 
Despair. With Origen God tri- 
umphs in final unity ; with Augustine man contin- 
ues in endless rebellion, and God is defeated, and an 
eternal dualism prevails. And the effect on the be- 
liever was in the one case a pitying love and charity 
that gave the melting heart that could not bear to 
think of even the devil unsaved, and that antedated 
the poet's prayer, — 

" Oh, wad ye tak a thought and mend," 
and that believed the prayer would be answered; 
and in the other a stony-hearted indifference to the 
misery of mankind, which he called " one damned 
batch and mass of perdition. " 2 

Augustine brought his theology with him from 
Manichaeism when he became a Christian, only he 
added perpetuity to the dualism that 
Augustine's Mani made temporal. " The doctrine 

Acknowledgment, of endless punishment assumed in the 
writings of Augustine a prominence 
and rigidity which had no parallel in the earlier his- 
tory of theology * * * and which savors of the 
teaching of Mohammed more than of Christ. 3 Hith- 
erto, even in the West, it had been an open question 
whether the punishment hereafter of sin unrepented 

2 Conspersio damnata, massa perditionis. 
3Allen, Cont. Christ. Thought. 



AUGUSTINE— DETERIORATION CONTINUED. 273 

of and not forsaken was to be endless. Augustine 
has left on record the fact that some, indeed very 
many, still fell back upon the mercy and love of God 
as a ground of hope for the ultimate restoration of 
humanity 4 * * * he is the first writer to under- 
take a long and elaborate defense of the doctrine of 
endless punishment, and to wage a polemic against 
its impugners. * * * He rallies the 'tender- 
hearted Christians, ' as he calls them, who cannot 
accept it." About 420 he speaks of his " merciful 
brethren," 5 or party of pity, among the orthodox 
Christians, who advocate the salvation of all, and he 
challenges them, like Origen, to advocate also the 
redemption of the devil and his angels. Thus though 
the virus of Roman Paganism was extending, the 
truth of the Gospel was yet largely held. And it 
was the immense power Augustine came to wield 
that so dominated the church that it afterwards 
stamped out the doctrine of universal salvation. 

Augustine assumed and insisted that the words 
denning the duration of punishment, in the New 
Testament, teach its endlessness, and 
Augustine's Criti- the claim set up by Augustine is the 
cisms and Mistakes, one still held by the advocates of 
" the dying belief," that at emus in 
the Latin, and aionios in t he original Greek, mean 
interminable duration. It seems that a Spanish 
presbyter, Orosius, visited Augustine in the year 
413, and besought him for arguments to meet the 



4 Enchiridion cxii: " Frustra itaque nonulli, imo quam plurimi, seter- 
nam damnatorum poenam et cruciatus sine intermissione perpetuos hu- 
mano miserantur affectu, atque ita futurum esse non credunt. " 

5 Misericordibus nostris. De Civ. Dei., xxi: 17. 



274 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

position that punishment is not to be without end, 
because aionios does not denote eternal, but limited 
duration. Augustine replied that though aion sig- 
nifies limited as well as endless duration, the Greeks 

only used aionios for endless; and he 
Augustine's originated the argument so much re- 

Ignorance, sorted to even yet, based on the fact 

that in Matt, xxv: 46, the same word 
is applied to "life," and to "punishment." The 
student of Greek need not be told that Augustine's 
argument is incorrect, and he scarcely needs to be 
assured that Augustine did not know Greek. This 
he confesses. He says he "hates Greek," and the 
" grammar learning of the Greeks." 6 It is anoma- 
lous in the history of criticism that generations of 
scholars should take their cue in a matter of Greek 
definition from one who admits that he had "learned 
almost nothing of Greek," and was "not competent 
to read and understand " the language, and reject 
the positions held by those who were born Greeks ! 
That such a man should contradict and subvert the 
teachings of such men as Clement, Origen, the 
Gregories and others whose mother- tongue was 
Greek, is passing strange. But his powerful influ- 
ence, aided by the civil arm, established his doctrine 



6 Graecae autem linguae non sit nobis tantus habitus, ut talium rerum 
libris legendis et intelligences ullo modo reperiamur idonei, (De Trin. lib 
III); and, et ego quidem grascae lingua? perparum assecutus sum, et prope 
nihil. (Contra litteras Petiliani, lib Il.xxxviii, 91. Migne, Vol. XLIII.) Quid 
autem erat causa? cur graecas litteras oderam quibus puerulus imbuebar ne 
nunc quidem mihi satis exploratum est: " But what was the cause of my 
dislike of Greek literature, which I studied from my boyhood, 1 cannot even 
now understand. " Conf. 1: 13 . This ignorance of the original Scriptures 
was a poor outfit with which to furnish orthodox critics for a thousand 
years. See Rosenmuller, Hist. Interp., iii„ 40. 



AUGUSTINE— DETERIORATION CONTINUED. 275 

till it came to rule the centuries. Augustine al- 
ways quotes the New Testament from the old Latin 
version, the Itala, from which the Vulgate was 
formed, instead of the original Greek. See Preface 
to ' ' Confessions. " It seems that the doctrine of Ori- 
gen prevailed in Northeastern Spain at this time, and 
that Jerome's translation of Origen's " Principiis " 
had circulated with good effect, and that Augustine, 
to counteract the influence of Origen's book, wrote 
in 415, a small work, ' 'Against the Priscillianists and 
Origenists. " From about this time began the efforts 
of Augustine and his followers that subsequently 
entirely changed the character of Christian theology. 
Says Milman: " The Augustinian theology coin- 
cided with the tendencies of the age towards the 
growth of the strong sacerdotal sys- 
Milman on tern ; and the sacerdotal system rec- 

Augustinianism. onciled Christendom with the Augus- 
tinian theology." And it was in the 
age of Augustine, at the maturity of his powers, 
that the Latin church developed its theological sys- 
tem, ' ' differing at every point from the earlier Greek 
theology, starting from different premises, and actu- 
ated throughout by another motive, " 7 and from that 
time, for nearly fifteen centuries it held sway, and 
for more than a thousand years the sentiment of 
Christendom was little more or less than the echo of 
the voice of Augustine. " When Augustine appeared 
the Greek tongue was dying out, the Greek spirit 
was waning, the Paganism of Rome and its civil 



7 Latin Christ. 



276 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

genius were combined, and a Roman emperor 
usurped the throne of the God of love. " 8 

Augustine declared that God had no kind pur- 
pose in punishing; that it would not be unjust to 
torment all souls forever ; a few are saved to illus- 
trate God's mercy. The majority "are predes- 
tinated to eternal fire with the devil." He held, 
however, that all punishments beyond the grave are 
not endless. He says, " Non autem omnes veniunt 
in sempiternas pcenas, quae post illud judicium sunt 
futurae, qui post mortem sustinent temporales. " 9 

Augustine, however, held the penalties of sin in 
a much milder form than do his degenerate theologi- 
cal descendants in modern times. He 
Augustine Less Se- teaches that the lost still retain good- 
vere Than Mod- , -, -, 1 , -, -, 

» ,, . ness, — too valuable to be destroyed, 

ern Orthodoxy. ' J ' 

and on that account the worst are 
not in absolute evil, but only in a lower degree of 
good. ' ' Grief for lost good in a state of punishment 
is a witness of a good nature. For he who grieves 
for the lost peace for his nature, grieves for it by 
means of some remains of peace, by which it is 
caused that nature should be friendly to itself. " He 
taught that while unbaptized children must be 
damned in a Gehenna of fire, their torments would 
be light (levissimd) compared with the torment of 
other sinners, and that their condition would be 
far preferable to non-existence, and so on the whole 
a blessing. In a limbus infantum they would only 
receive a mitissima damnatio. He also taught that 
death did not necessarily end probation, as is 

8 Allen, Cont. Christ. Thought, p. 156. 
9 De Civ. Dei. 



AUGUSTINE -DETERIORATION CONTINUED. 277 

quite fully shown under ''Christ's Descent into Ha- 
des. " Augustine's idea was reduced to rhyme in 
the sixteenth century by the Rev. Michael Wig- 
glesworth, of Maiden, Mass., who was the Puritan 
pastor of the church in that place. A curious fact 
in the history of the parish is this, — that the church 
in which these ridiculous sentiments were uttered 
became, in 1828, by vote of the parish, Universalist, 
and is now the Universalist church in Maiden. The 
poem represents God as saying to non-elect infants : 

" You sinners are, and such a share 

As sinners may expect, 
Such you shall have, for I do save 

None but my own elect. 
Yet to compare your sin with theirs 

Who lived a longer time, 
I do confess yours is much less 

Though every sin's a crime. 
A crime it is, therefore in bliss 

You may not hope to dwell, 
But unto you I shall allow 

The easiest room in hell!" 

Augustine thought that the cleansing fire might 
burn away venial sins between death and the resur- 
rection. He says : "I do not refute it, because, 
perhaps, it is true; " 10 and that the sins of the good 
may be eradicated by a similar process. 

He was certainly an example that might advan- 
tageously have been copied by opponents of Univer- 
salism in very recent years. Though he said the 
church "detested " it, he kindly added: "They who 
believe this, and yet are Catholics, seem to me to be 
deceived by a certain human tenderness, " and he 

l0 De Civ. Dei. " non redargue quia forsitan verum est." 



278 UNIVERSALISM -IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

urged Jerome to continue to translate Origen for the 
benefit of the African church ! n 

Under such malign influences, however, the 
broad and generous theology of the East soon 
passed away ; the language in which 
Decadence and it was expressed — the language of 
Deterioration. Clement, Origen, Basil, the Greg- 

ories, became unknown among the 
Christians of the West; the cruel doctrines of Au- 
gustine harmonized with the cruelty of the bar- 
barians and of Roman Paganism amalgamated, and 
thus Africa smothered the milder spirit of Christen- 
dom, and Augustine riveted the fetters that were to 
manacle the church for more than ten long centu- 
ries. " The triumph of Latin theology was the death 
of rational exegesis. " 

But before this evil influence prevailed, some of 
the great Latin fathers rivaled the immortal leaders 
in the Oriental church. Among these was Ambrose, 
of whom Jerome says, "nearly all his books are full 
of Origenism," which Huet repeats, while the " Dic- 
tionary of Christian Biography " tells us that he 
teaches that " even to the wicked death is a gain." 
Thus the genial thought of Origen was still potent, 
even in the West, though a harder theology was over- 
coming it. 

Says Hagenbach : ; ' In proportion to the devel- 
opment of ecclesiastical orthodoxy into fixed and 
systematic shape was the loss of individual freedom 
in respect to the formation of doctrines, and the in- 
creased peril of becoming heretical. The more lib- 

"Ep. 8. 



AUGUSTINE-DETERIORATION CONTINUED. 279 

eral tendency of former theologians, such as Origen, 
could no longer be tolerated, and was at length con- 
demned. But, notwithstanding this external con- 
demnation, the spirit of Origen continued to animate 
the chief theologians of the East, though it was kept 
within narrower limits. The works of this great 
teacher were also made known in the West by Jerome 
and Rufinus, and exerted an influence even upon his 
opponents. " After Justinian the Greek empire and 
influence contracted, and the Latin and Roman 
power expanded. Latin became the language of 
Christianity, and Augustine's system and followers 
used it as the instrument of molding Christianity 
into an Africo-Romano heathenism. The Apostles' 
and Nicene creeds were disregarded, and Arianism, 
Origenism, Pelagianism, Manichaeism and other so- 
called heresies were nearly or quite obliterated, and 
the Augustinian inventions of original and inherited 
depravity, predestination, and endless hell torments, 
became the theology of Christendom. 

Thus, says Schaff, "the Roman state, with its 
laws,, institutions, and usages, was still deeply rooted 

in heathenism. The Christianizing 
Christianity f the state amounted therefore to 

Paganized. a paganizing and secularizing of the 

church. The world overcame the 
church as much as the church overcame the world, 
and the temporal gain of Christianity was in many 
respects canceled by spiritual loss. The mass of the 
Roman Empire was baptized only with water, not 
with the spirit and fire of the Gospel, and it 
smuggled heathen practices and manners into the 
sanctuary under a new name. " The broad faith of 



280 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

the primitive Christians paled and faded before the 
lurid terrors of Augustinianism. It vanished in the 
Sixth Century, " crushed out," says Bigg, " by tyr- 
anny and the leaden ignorance of the age. " It re- 
mained in the East a while, was u widely diffused 
among the monasteries of Egypt and Palestine," and 
only ceased when Augustinianism and Catholicism 
and the power of Rome ushered in and fostered the 
darkness of the Dark Ages. Says an accurate writer : 
1 ' If Augustine had not been born an African, and 
trained as a Manichee, nay, if he had only faced the 
labor of learning Greek — a labor from which he con- 
fesses that he had shrunk — the whole stream of Chris- 
tian theology might have been purer and more 
sweet." 

In no other respect did Augustine differ more 
widely from Origen and the Alexandrians than in 

his intolerant spirit. Even Tertul- 
Augustinianism L ian conceded to all the right of 
Cruel. opinion. Gregory of Nazianzus, 

Ambrose, Athanasius and Augus- 
tine himself in his earlier days, recorded the toler- 
ance that Christianity demands. But he afterwards 
came to advocate and defend the persecution of re- 
ligious opponents. Milm an observes: "With shame 
and horror we hear from Augustine himself that 
fatal axiom which impiously arrayed cruelty in 
the garb of Christian charity. " 12 He was the first in 
the long line of Christian persecutors, and illustrates 
the character of the theology that swayed him in the 
wicked spirit that impelled him to advocate the right 

"Latin Christianity, 1, 127. 



AUGUSTINE-DETERIORATION CONTINUED. 281 

to persecute Christians who differ from those in 
power. The dark pages that bear the record of sub- 
sequent centuries are a damning witness to the cruel 
spirit that actuated Christians, and the cruel theol- 
ogy that impelled it. Augustine "was the first and 
ablest asserter of the principle which led to Albigen- 
sian crusades, Spanish armadas, Netherlands butch- 
eries, St. Bartholomew massacres, the accursed infa- 
mies of the Inquisition, the vile espionage, the hideous 
bale fires of Seville and Smithfield, the racks, the 
gibbets, the thumbscrews, the subterranean torture - 
chambers used by churchly torturers. " 13 And 
George Sand well says that the Roman church com- 
mitted suicide the day she invented an implacable 
God and eternal damnation. 14 



13 Farrar's Lives of the Fathers. 

M" L' Eglise Romaine s'est porte le dernier coup: elle a consomme son 
suicide le jour on elle a fait Dieu implacable et la damnation eternelle. " 
Spiridion. 



XXI. 

UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS 
UNIVERSALISM. 

Historians and writers on the state of opinion in 
the early church have quite often erred in declaring 
that an ecclesiastical council pronounced the doctrine 
of universal salvation heretical, as early as the Sixth 
Century. Even so learned and accurate a writer as 
our own Dr. Ballou, has fallen into this error, 
though his editor, the Rev. A. St. John Chambre, 
D. D. , subsequently corrected the mistake in a brief 
note. 

A. D. 399 a council in Jerusalem condemned the 
Origenists, and all who held with them, that the Son 
was in any way subordinate to the Father. In 401 a 
council in Alexandria anathematized the writings of 
Origen, presumably for the same reason as above. 
Certainly his views of human destiny were not men- 
tioned. 

In 544-6, a condemnation of Origen 's views of 
human salvation was attempted to be extorted from 
a small, local council in Constantinople, by the em- 
peror Justinian, but his edict was not obeyed by the 
council. He issued an edict to Mennas, patriarch of 
Constantinople, requiring him to assemble the bishops 
resident, or casually present there, to condemn the 
doctrine of universal restoration. Fulminating ten 
anathemas, he especially urged Mennas to anathe- 

282 



ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS UNIVERSALISM. 283 

matize the doctrine "that wicked men and devils 
will at length be discharged from their torments, 
and re-established in their original state." 1 He 
wrote to Mennas requiring him to frame a canon in 
these words: 

1 ' Whoever says or thinks that the torments of the 
demons and of impious men are temporal, so that 
they will at length come to an end, or whoever holds 
to a restoration either of the demons or of the im- 
pious, let him be anathema." 

It is conceded that the half -heathen emperor held 
to the idea of endless misery, for he proceeds not 
only to defend, but to define the doc- 
trine. 2 He does not merely say, ' 'We 
Justinian's Views. , 1 . . . z. / • »> r ±u + 

believe m aionion kolastn, for that 

was just what Origen himself taught. 
Nor does he say "the word aionion has been misun- 
derstood; it denotes endless duration," as he would 
have said, had there been such a disagreement. But, 
writing in Greek, with all the words of that copious 
language from which to choose, he says : ' ' The holy 
church of Christ teaches an endless czonian {ateleutetos 
aionios) life to the righteous, and endless (ateleutetos) 
punishment to the wicked. " If he supposed aionios 
denoted endless duration, he would not have added 
the stronger word to it. The fact that he qualified 
it by ateleutetos, demonstrated that as late as the 
sixth century the former word did not signify endless 
duration. 

Justinian need only to have consulted his con- 



Wicephorus, Eccle. Hist., xvii: 27. Hefele, iv: 220. 

2 Murdock's Mosheim I, pp. 410-11; Gieseler, Hist, vi, p. 478. Also Ha- 
genbach and Neander. Cave's Historia Literaria. 



284 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

temporary, Olympiodorus, who wrote on this very 
subject, to vindicate his language. In his commen- 
tary on the Meteorologica of Aristotle, 3 he says: 
" Do not suppose that the soul is punished for end- 
less ages (Snreipovs diwvas) in Tartarus. Very prop- 
erly the soul is not punished to gratify the re- 
venge of the divinity, but for the sake of healing. 
But we say that the soul is punished for an ceonian 
period, calling its life, and its allotted period of pun- 
ishment, its ceon." It will be noticed that he not 
only denies endless punishment, and denies that the 
doctrine can be expressed by aionios, but declares 
that punishment is temporary and results in the sin- 
ner's improvement. Justinian not only concedes 
that aionios requires a word denoting endlessness to 
give it the sense of limitless duration, but he insists 
that the council shall frame a canon containing a 
word that shall indisputably express the doctrine of 
endless woe, while it shall condemn those who advo- 
cate universal salvation. Now though the emperor 
exerted his great influence to foist his heathen doc- 
trine into the Church canons, he failed ; for nothing 
resembling it appears in the canons enacted by the 
synodical council. 

The synod voted fifteen canons, -not one of which 
condemns universal restoration. 

The first canon reads thus : "If anyone asserts 

the fabulous pre-existence of souls, 

Home Synod and the monstrous restitution which 

Canons. follows from it, let him be anathema." 

This condemnation, it will be 

readily seen, is not of universal salvation, but of a 

»Vol. I, p. 282. Ideler's edition. 



ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS UNIVERSALISM. 285 

" monstrous" restitution based on the soul's pre- 
existence. That this view is correct appears from 
the fourteenth anathema : 

* ' If anyone says that there will be a single unity 
of all rational beings, their substances and individ- 
ualities being taken away together with their bodies, 
and also that there will be an identity of cognition as 
also of persons, and that in the fabulous restitution 
they will only be'naked even as they had existed in 
that prse-existence which they insanely introduced, 
let him be anathema. " 

The reader will at once perceive that these 
canons do not describe any genuine form of our 
faith, but only a distorted caricature which no doubt 
was thought to represent the doctrine they opposed. 
But not one of the nine anathemas ordered by 
Justinian was sanctioned by the council. They 
were laid before the Home Synod, but the Synod did 
not indorse them. Fifteen canons were passed, but 
the Synod refused to reprobate universal salvation. 
Justinian was unable to compel the bishops under 
his control to condemn the doctrine he hated, but 
which they must have favored. The theory here con- 
demned is not that of universal salvation, but the 
' ' fabulous pre- existence of souls, and the monstrous 
restitution that results from it. 4 

The bishops, says Landon, declared that they 
adhered to the doctrines of Athanasius, Basil and 
the Gregories. The doctrine of Theodore on the 
Sonship of Christ was condemned, also the teachings 
of Theodoret. "Origen was not condemned." 5 

^Mansi IX, p. 395; Hefele, iv: 336. 
6 Landon, pp. 177-8. 



286 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

Even the influence of Justinian and his obse- 
quious bishop, and his disreputable queen, failed to 
force the measure through. The action of this local 
Synod has been incorrectly ascribed to the Fifth 
(Ecumenical Council, nine years later, which has also 

been inacurately supposed to have con- 
The Council Re- , A TT . ,. « 

fused to Condemn demned Umversalism, when it mere- 
Universalism. ty reprehended some of the vagaries 

of "Origenism" — doctrines that 
even Origen himself never accepted, but that were 
falsely ascribed to him by ignorant or malicious op- 
ponents ; doctrines that no more resemble universal 
restoration, as taught by the Alexandrine fathers, 
than they resemble Theosophy or Buddhism. So 
that, though the Home Synod was called by the Em- 
peror Justinian expressly to condemn Universalism, 
and was commanded by imperial edict to anathema- 
tize it, and though it formulated fifteen canons, it 
refused to obey the Emperor, and did not say one 
word against the doctrine the Emperor wished to an- 
athematize. The local council came to no decision. 
Justinian had just arbitrarily condemned the writ- 
ings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Theodoret, 
and a terrible controversy and division ensued, and 
Theodorus, of Cesaraea, declared that both himself 
and Pelagius, who had sought the condemnation of 
Origen, ought to be burnt alive for their conduct. 6 

In the Fifth General Council of 553 the name of 
Origen appears with others in the eleventh canon, 
but the best scholars think that the insertion of his 
name is a forgery. 

Whether so or not, there is not a word referring 

6 Landon, Manual of Councils, London, 1846, p. 174. 



ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS UNIVERSALISM. 287 

to his views of human destiny. His name only appears 
among the names of the heretics, such as ' ' Arius, 
Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinaris, Etityches, Ori- 
gen and other impious men, and all other heretics 
who are condemned and anathematized by the Cath- 
olic and Apostolical Church, etc." 7 The Fifth Ecu- 
menical Council, which was held nine years later than 
the local, neither condemned Origen by name, nor 
anathematized his Universalism. The object of this 
council was to condemn certain Nestorian doctrines; 
and as Gregory of Nyssa, the most explicit of Uni- 
versalists, is referred to with honor by the council, 
and as the denial of endless punishment by Origen, 
and his advocacy of Universalism are not named, we 
cannot avoid the conviction that the council was con- 
trolled by those who held, or at least did not repudi- 
ate Universalism. 

Great confusion exists among the authorities on 
this subject. The local council has been confounded 
with the general. Hefele has disentangled the per- 
plexities. 

It was not even at that late day — three centuries 
after his death — the Universalism of Origen that 
caused the hatred of his opponents, but his opposition 
to the Episcopizing policy of the church, his insisting 
on the triple sense of the Word, etc. , and the pecul- 
iar form of a mis-stated doctrine of the restoration. 8 

Now, let the reader remember that for more than 

7 The canon reads: " Si quis non anathematizat Arium, Eunomium, 
Macedonium, Apollinarium, Nestorium, Eutychen, Origenem cum impiis 
eorum conscriptis, et alios omnes haereticos, qui condemnati et anathemati- 
zati sunt a Catholica et Apostolica Ecclesia," etc. 

8 Dietelmaier declares that many of the church doctors agreed with O RI- 
SEN in advocating the salvability of the devil. 



288 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

five hundred years, during which Universalism had 

prevailed, not a single treatise against 
Universalism not ., . n « , 

~. . , it is known to have been written. 

Condemned for 

Five Centuries. And with the exception of Augus- 
tine, no opposition appears to have 
been aroused against it on the part of any eminent 
Christian writer. And not only so, but A. D. 381, 
at the first great Ecumenical Council of Constanti- 
nople, the intellectual leader was Gregory of Nyssa, 
who was only second to Origen as an advocate of 
universal restoration. Thus his followers, not only, 
but his opponents on other points, accepted the great 
truth of the Gospel. As Dr. Beecher pointedly ob- 
serves: " It is also a striking fact that while Origen 
lies under a load of odium as a heretic, Gregory of 
Nyssa, who taught the doctrine of the restoration of 
all things more fully even than Origen, has been 
canonized, and stands high on the roll of eminent 
saints, even in the orthodox Roman Catholic Church. " 
Beecher's conclusion is, "That the modern or- 
thodox views as to the doctrine of eternal punish- 
ment, as opposed to final restoration, were not fully 
developed and established till the middle of the Sixth 
Century, and that then they were not established 
by thorough argument, but by imperial authority. " 
But the fact is that they were not even then matured 
and established. 

The learned Professor pLUMPTREsays in the "Dic- 
tionary of Christian Biography": "We have no 
evidence that the belief in the d7roKaTao-Ta<ris, which 
prevailed in the fourth and fifth centuries was ever 
definitely condemned by any council of the Church, 
and so far as Origen was named as coming under the 



ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS UNIVERSALISM. 289 

church's censure it was rather as if involved in the 
general sentence passed upon the leaders of Nestor- 
ianism, than singled out for special and characteris- 
tic errors. So the council of Constantinople, the so- 
called Fifth General Council, A. D. 553, condemns 
Arms, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinarius, Nesto- 
rius, Eutyches and Origen in a lump, but does not 
specify the errors of the last-named, as though they 
differed in kind from theirs, and it is not till in the 
council of Constantinople, known as in Trullo (A. 
D. 696) that we find an anathema which specifies 
somewhat cloudily the guilt of Theodore of Mopsu- 
estia, and Origen, and Didymus, and Evagrius, as 
consists in their * inventing a mythology after the 
manner of the Greeks, and inventing changes and 
migrations for our souls and bodies, and impiously 
uttering drunken ravings as to the future life of the 
dead.' It deserves to be noted that this ambiguous 
anathema pronounced by a council of no authority, 
under the weak and vicious Emperor Justinian IT, 
is the only approach to a condemnation of the eschat- 
ology of Origen which the annals of the church coun- 
cils present." 9 

Significant Facts and Conclusions. 
Now let the reader recapitulate: (1) Origen dur- 
ing his life-time was never opposed for his Universal- 
ism; (2) after his death Methodius, about A. D. 300, 
attacked his views of the resurrection, creation and 
pre-existence, but said not a word against his Uni- 
versalism; (3) ten years later Pamphilus and Euse- 
bius (A. D. 310) defended him against nine charges 

9 Article Eschatology p. 194; also Spirits in Prison, p. 41. 



290 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

that had been brought against his views, but his Uni- 
versalism was not among them; (4) in 330 Marcel- 
lus of Ancyra, a Universalist, opposed him for his 
views of the Trinity, and (5) Eustathius for his 
teachings concerning the Witch of Endor, but lim- 
ited their arraignment to those items; (6) in 376 
Epiphanius assailed his heresies, but he did not 
name Universalism as among them, and in 394 he 
condemned O rig en's doctrine of the salvation of the 
Devil, but not of all mankind; (7) in 399 and 401, his 
views of Christ's death to save the Devil were at- 
tacked by Epiphanius, Jerome and Theophilus, and 
his advocacy of the subordination of Christ to God 
was condemned, but not his teachings of man's uni- 
versal salvation; and (8) it was not till 544 and again 
in 553 that his enemies formulated attacks on that 
doctrine, and made a cat's-paw of a half-heathen Em- 
peror, and even then, though the latter framed a 
canon for the synod, it was never adopted, and the 
council adjourned — owing, it must have been, to the 
Universalistic sentiment in it — without a word of 
condemnation of Origen's Universalism. With the 
exception of Augustine, the doctrine which had 
been constantly advocated, often by the most emi- 
nent, did not evoke a frown of opposition from any 
eminent scholar or saint. 

The character of these ancient synods and coun- 
cils is well described by Gregory Nazianzen, A. D. 

382, in a letter to Procopius: "I 
The Ancient am determined to avoid every assem- 

Councils. bly of bishops. I have never seen a 

single instance in which a synod did 
any good. Strife and ambition dominate them to an 



ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS UNIVERSALISM. 291 

incredible degree. * * * From councils and syn- 
ods I will keep myself at a distance^ for I have ex- 
perienced that most of them, to speak with modera- 
tion, are not worth much. * * * I will not sit in 
the seat of synods, while geese and cranes confused 
wrangle. Discord is there, and shameful things, 
hidden before, are gathered into one meeting place 
of rivals. " Milman tells us: " Nowhere is Christ- 
ianity less attractive, and if we look to the ordinary 
tone and character of the proceedings, less authori- 
tative than in the Councils of the Church. It is in 
general a fierce collision of rival factions, neither of 
which will yield, each of which is solemnly pledged 
against conviction. Intrigue, injustice, violence, de- 
cisions on authority alone, and that the authority of 
a turbulent majority, decisions by wild acclamation 
rather than after sober enquiry, detract from the rev- 
erence, and impugn the- judgments, at least of the 
later councils. The close is almost invariably a ter- 
rible anathema, in which it is impossible not to dis- 
cern the tones of human hatred, of arrogant triumph, 
of rejoicing at the damnation imprecated against the 
humiliated adversary. " 10 Scenes of strife and even 
murder in connection with ancient ecclesiastical coun- 
cils were not uncommon. 

There is no evidence whatever to show that it was 
not entirely allowable for five hundred years after 
Christ, to entertain the belief in universal salvation. 
Besides, the Council of Nice, A. D. 325, had, as an 
active member, Eusebius, Origen's apologist, a pro- 
nounced Universalist; the Council of Constantinople, 

"Latin Christ. I, p. 227. 



2 9 2 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

A. D. 381, had as active members the two Gregor- 
ies, Nazianzus and Nyssa, the latter as outspoken a 
Universalist as Origen himself; the Council of 
Ephesus, A. D. 431, declared that Gregory Nys- 
sen's writings were thegreat bulwark against heresy. 
The fact that the doctrine was and had been for cen- 
turies prevalent, if not the prevailing sentiment, 
demonstrates that it must have been regarded as a 
Christian doctrine by the members of these great 
councils, or they would have fulminated against it. 

How preposterous the idea that the prevailing 
sentiment of Christendom was adverse to the doc- 
trine of universal restoration even as late as the mid- 
dle of the Sixth Century, when these great, heresy- 
hunting bodies met and dispersed without condemn- 
ing it, even at the dictation of a tyrannical Emperor, 
who expressly demanded its condemnation. 

1. Neander and Gieseler say that the name of 
Origen was foisted into the declaration of the Fifth 
Council by forgery at a later date. 2. But if the 
condemnation was actually adopted it was of ' ' Ori- 
genism, " which was synonymous with other opinions. 

3. "Origenism " could not have meant Universal- 
ism, for several of the leaders of the council that 
condemned Origenism held to universal restitution. 

4. Besides, the council eulogistically referred to the 
Gregories (Nazianzen and Nyssen) who were Uni- 
versalists as explicit as was Origen. Manifestly, if 
the Council had meant Universalism by ' ' Origenism, " 
it would not have condemned as a deadly heresy in 
Origen what Gregory of Nyssa advocated, and an- 
athematized the one, and glorified the other. 

Justinian not only commanded the council to 



ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS UNIVERSALISM. 293 

suppress Universalism, but he arbitrarily closed the 
schools in Athens, Alexandria and An- 
Justinian's Suppres- tioch.and drove out of the great church 
sion of the Truth, centers that theological science that 
had been its glory. He had "brought 
the whole empire under his sway and he wished in 
like manner to settle finally the law and the dogmat- 
ics of the empire." To accomplish this evil work he 
found an aid in Rome, in a " characterless Pope 
(Vigilius) who, in gratifying the emperor covered 
himself with disgrace, and jeopardized his position in 
the Occident." But he succeeded in inaugurating 
measures that extinguished the broad faith of the 
greatest fathers of the church. "Henceforth," says 
Harnack, "there was no longer a theological sci- 
ence going back to first principles." u 

The historians inform us that Justinian the 
great opponent of Universalism was positive, irrita- 
ble, apt to change his views, and accessible to the 
flatteries and influences of those who surrounded 
him, yet withal, very opinionated in insisting upon 
any view he happened at the time to hold, and pre- 
pared to enforce compliance by the free employment 
of his despotic power," a "temporal pope." 12 The 
corrupt Bishop Theophilus, the vile Eudoxia and 
the equally disreputable, though beautiful, crafty 
and unscrupulous Theodora, exercised a malign 
influence on Justinian, the Emperor, and, thus 
was dictated the action of the council described 
above. 

Milman declares: "The Emperor Justinian 

"Outlines Hist. Dog., pp. 204, 8, 320, 323. 
12 Sozomen, Eccl. HisV, Gibbon, Decline and Fall. 



294 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

unites in himself the most opposite vices, — insatiable 
rapacity and lavish prodigality, in- 
Justinian and tense pride and contemptible weak- 

His Age. ness, unmeasured ambition and das- 

tardly cowardice. He is the uxorious 
slave of his Empress, whom, after she had minis- 
tered to the licentious pleasures of the populace as a 
courtesan and as an actress in the most immodest ex- 
hibitions, in defiance of decency, of honor, of the re- 
monstrances of his friends, and of religion, he had 
made the partner of his throne. In the Christian 
Emperor seemed to meet the crimes of those who 
won or secured their empire by the assasination of 
all whom they feared, the passion for public diver- 
sions without the accomplishments of Nero, the 
brute strength of Commodus, or the dotage of Claud- 
ius. " And he was the champion of endless punish- 
ment in the Sixth Century ! 

Justinian is described as an ascetic, a scholastic, 
and a pedant, "neither beloved in his life, nor 
regretted at his death. " 

The age of Justinian, says Lecky, that condemned 
Origen, is conceded to have been the vilest of the 
Christian centuries. The doctrine of a hell of literal 
fire and endless duration had begun to be an engine 
of tyranny in the hands of an unscrupulous priest- 
hood, and a tyrannical emperor, and moral degrada- 
tion had kept pace with the theological declination. 
' ' The universal verdict of history is that it consti- 
tutes, without a single exception, the most thor- 
oughly base and despicable form that civilization has 
yet assumed. " Contrasted with the age of Origen 
it was as night to day. And the persons who were 



ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS UNIVERSALISM. 295 

most active and prominent in the condemnation of 
the great Alexandrian were fit implements for the 
task. On this point the language of Farrar in 
" Mercy and Judgment " is accurate: " Every fresh 
study of the original authorities only leaves on my 
mind a deeper impression that even in the Fifth Cen- 
tury Universalism as regards mankind was regarded 
as a perfectly tenable opinion." 

Thus the record of the times shows, and the testi- 
mony of the scholars who have made the subject a 

careful study concedes, that though 
The Divine Light there were sporadic assaults on the 
Eclipsed. doctrine of universal restitution in 

the fourth and fifth centuries; they 
were not successful in placing the ban of a single 
council upon it ; even to the middle of the Sixth Cen- 
tury. So far as history shows the sublime fact 
which the great Alexandrians made prominent — the 

" One divine event to which the whole creation moves," 

had never been stigmatized by any considerable por- 
tion of the Christian church for at least its first half 
a millenium of years. 

The subsequent history of Christianity shows but 
too plainly that the continued influence of Roman 
law and Pagan theology as incarnated in the mighty 
brain of Augustine, came to dominate the Christian 
world, and at length almost obliterate the faith 
once delivered to the saints — the faith that exerted 
so vast an influence in the church's earliest and best 
centuries — and spread the pall of darkness over Chris- 
tendom, so that the light of the central fact of the 
Gospel was scarcely seen for sad- and cruel cen- 
turies. 



XXII. 

THE ECLIPSE OF UNIVERSALISM. 

The submergence of Christian Universalism in 
the dark waters of Augustinian Christo- paganism, 
after having been the prevailing theology of Christen- 
dom for centuries, is one of the strange phenomena 
in the history of religious thought. This volume ex- 
plains, in part, this obscure phenomenon. History 
testifies that at the close of what Hagenbach calls 
the second period, from A. D. 254 to A. D. 730, the 
opinion in favor of endless punishment had become 
"more general. " Only a few belonging to the " Or- 
igenist humanity * * * still dared to express a 
glimmer of hope in favor of the damned * * * 
the doctrine of the restitution of all things shared the 
fate of Origenism, and made its appearance in after 
ages only in connection with other heretical notions." 

Kingsley attributes the decadence and deteriora- 
tion of the Alexandrine School and its doctrines and 
methods, to the abandonment of its 
Disappearance of intense activity, to the relinquish- 
the Truth. ment of the grand enthusiasm for 

humanity that characterized Clem- 
ent, Origen and their co-workers. He says: " Hav- 
ing no more Heathens to fight, they began fighting 
each other; * * * they became dogmatists * 
* * they lost the knowledge of God, of righteous- 
ness, and love, and peace. That Divine Logos, and 

296 



THE ECLIPSE OF UNIVERSALISM. 297 

theology as a whole receded farther and farther aloft 
into abysmal heights, as it became a mere dreary 
system of dead scientific terms, having no practical 
bearing on their hearts and lives. " In a word, their 
abandonment of the principles of Clement and his 
school, left the field open to the more practical, di- 
rect and methodical, though degraded and corrupt 
theories of Augustine and his associates. This pro- 
cess continued till toward the middle of the Seventh 
Century, when, as Kingsley observes: "In the 
year 640, the Alexandrians who were tearing each 
other in pieces about some Jacobite and Melchite con- 
troversy, to me incomprehensible * * * in the 
midst of these Jacobite and Melchite controversies 
and riots, appeared before the city the armies of cer- 
tain wild and unlettered Arab tribes. A short and 
fruitless struggle followed ; and strange to say, a few 
months swept away from the face of the earth, not 
only the wealth, the commerce, the castles, and the 
liberty, but the philosophy and the Christianity of 
Alexandria; crushed to powder, by one fearful blow, 
all that had been built up by Alexander and the 
Ptolemies, by Clement and the philosophers, and 
made void, to all appearance, nine hundred years of 
human toil. The people, having no real hold on 
their hereditary creed, accepted, by tens of thousands, 
that of the Mussulman invaders. The Christian 
remnant became tributaries, and Alexandria dwin- 
dled from that time forth into a petty seaport town." * 
The " Universalist Quarterly, " January, 1878, at- 
tributes the decline and disappearance of Universal- 
Alexandria and her Schools. 



298 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

ism to an entire absence of polemic on the part of its 
advocates ; and to regarding the doctrine as eso- 
teric, instead of for all ; in other words, the undemo- 
cratic methods of those who accepted it. These fac- 
tors, no doubt, contributed, but they are not alone 
sufficient to account for its disappearance. 2 

It is not a part of the plan of this work to follow 
its fate after its almost entire disappearance for cen- 
turies. The combined efforts of Au- 
Christianity's gustine and his coadjutors and suc- 

Eclipse. cessors, of popes and emperors, of 

Paganism and Latin secularism, of 
ignorant half-converted hordes of heathen barbarians, 
and of a hierarchy that could not employ it in its 
ambitious schemes, at length crystallized into the 
psuedo- Christianity that reigned like a nightmare 
over Christendom, from the Seventh to the Fif- 
teenth Century. Ignorance, cruelty, oppression, 
were well-nigh universal, and the condition of man- 
kind reflected the views held by the church, of the 
character of God and of man, of time and of eternity, 
of heaven and of hell. Perhaps the darkest hour of 
the night of ages was just before the dawn of the 
Reformation. The prevalent Christian thought was 
represented in literature and art, and its best expo- 
nents of the sentiment of a thousand years are the 
works of the great artist, Michael Angelo, and of 
the equally great poet, Dante. They agree inspirit, 
and black and white, darkness and light, truth and 
falsehood are not more antipodal than is the theology 
of Dante and Angelo contrasted with the cheerful 

SRev. S. S. Hebberd. 



THE ECLIPSE OF UNIVERSALISM. 299 

simplicity, the divine purity of the primitive Chris- 
tian faith. ' ' That was a dark night that fell upon 
Christianity when its thought became Latinized. 
When Christianity came to be interpreted by the 
prosaic, unspiritual legal mind of Rome, the Gos- 
pel went into a fearful eclipse. When the Greek 
thought of Christ gave way to the Latin a night 
came upon the Christian world that has extended 
to the present day. Then were born all those 
half- views, distorted views, and false views of Chris- 
tian doctrine and Christian life that have perverted 
the Gospel, puzzled the human intellect and grieved 
the human heart through all the long centuries from 
that day to this. " 3 

Two great men of genius of the first order, the 
marvelous artist, Michael Angelo, and the equally 

great poet, Dante, on canvas and 
The Caricatures of in verse, gathered at its culmination 
Dante and Angelo. the nightmare of unbelief that had 

darkened the preceding centuries. 
In Dante are " Christian heroes appearing in heath- 
enish aspect, and heathenish poets and thinkers half - 
warmed by the light of Christianity, " a happy char- 
acterization of the hybrid product of truth and error 
that Dante describes, and that passed for Christian- 
ity during the Sixteenth Century, and with modifi- 
cations, has since prevailed. The "Last Judgment " 
of Michael Angelo harmonizes with the thought of 
the great poet. It is a Pagan reminiscence — a hid- 
eous heathen dream. The meek and lowly Man of 
Nazareth who would not break the bruised reed was 

3 Rev. S. Crane, D. D., in The Universalist. 



300 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES, 

travestied by a monstrous caricature. "An un- 
clothed, broad-shouldered hero, with arms upraised 
that could strike down a Hercules, distributing bless- 
ings and curses, his hair fluttering like flames which 
the storm blows back, and his angry countenance 
looking down on the condemned with frightful eyes, 
as if he wished to hasten forward the destruction in 
which his word has plunged them * * * the 
whole figure recalls the words of Dante, in which he 
calls Christ ' Sommo Giove,' — the most-high Jupiter. 
Thislie is here; not the suffering Son of Man, gen- 
tle as the moon, silent rather than speaking, with 
the foreboding of his fate written in his sad eyes. 
Yet, if a Last Judgment were to be painted, with 
everlasting condemnation, and Christ as the judge 
who pronounces it, how could he appear otherwise 
than in such terribleness? * * * Such is Michael 
Angelo's Last Judgment. While we cherish a feel- 
ing that at that day, whenever it occurs, the love of 
God will remit all sins as earthly error, the Roman 
sees alone anger and revenge, as proceeding from 
the Supreme Being, when he comes in contact with 
humanity for the last time. For the sinner is for- 
ever from henceforth to be condemned. It is an 
echo of the old idea, often enough recurring in the 
Old Testament, that the Divine Being is an angry 
and fearful power, which must be appeased, instead 
of the Source of good alone, abolishing at last all evil 
as an influence that has beguiled mankind. * * * 
As we look, however, at the Last Judgment on the 
wall of the Sistine Chapel, it is no longer a similitude 
to us, but a monument of the imaginative spirit of a 
past age and of a strange people, whose ideas are no 



THE ECLIPSE OF UNIVERSALISM. 301 

longer ours. Dante created a new world for the 
Romanic nations by remodeling the forms of heathen 
antiquity for his Christian mythology, " 4 Materialis- 
tic, gross, was the Christianity that ruled and op- 
pressed mankind for nearly a thousand years, and 
it is reflected in the pages of Dante, and on 
the canvas of Angelo, and it reverberates with 
ever decreasing echoes — thank God ! — in the subse- 
quent creeds of Christendom. Almost the only 
gleam of light, that relieved while it intensified the 
blackness of the darkness of Christendom during 
those dreadful centuries was the worship of Mary. 

The resurrection of Universalism after an eclipse 
of a millenium of years is as remarkable as was its 
strange disappearance. No better 
Re-birth of illustration can be found than the 

Universalism. history of our faith gives, of the te- 

nacity of life, the immortality, of 
truth. It calls to mind the language of the German 
sage, Schopenhauer: " Doubtless error can play its 
part, like owls in the night. But we should sooner 
expect the owls to cause the terrified sun to retire to 
the East, than to see the truth, once proclaimed, to 
be so repressed as that ancient error might recover 
its lost ground, and re-establish itself there in peace. " 
To truth belong "God's eternal years," and her 
emergence after so long a disappearance is an illus- 
tration of her immortal vitality. ' ' Crushed to earth" 
she has "risen again," and is fast being accepted by 
a regenerated Christendom. 

With the invention of printing, the dawn of light 

4 Grimm's Michael Angelo. 



302 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

• 
in the Reformation, 5 and the increase of intelligence, 
our distinctive form of faith has not 
The Dawn of only grown and extended, but its 

Truth, leavening power has modified the 

creeds of Christendom, softening all 
harsh theories, and unfolding a " rose of dawn" in 
all Christian lands. Though, like its author and re- 
vealer, it seemed to die, it was, like him, to come 
forth to a new and glorious resurrection, for the views 
held by the great saints and scholars in the first cen- 
turies of Christianity were substantially those that 
are taught by the Universalist Church for the cur- 
rent century, so far as they include the character of 
God, the nature and final destiny of mankind, the 
resurrection, the judgment, the purpose and end of 
punishment, and other cognate themes. On these 
subjects the great Church fathers stand as repre- 
sentatives of the Universalism of to-day, so that the 
progress of Christian ideas that the end of the pres- 
ent century is witnessing, is not, as many think, 
towards something new, but is towards the position 
of the early Christians seventeen hundred years ago. 
It is a re-birth, a restoration of Christianity to its 
primitive purity. As Max Muller has recently 
written: " If we want to be true and honest Chris- 
tians, we must go back to those earliest ante-Nicene 
authorities, the true fathers of the church." 6 This 
is being done by Christians in all branches of the 
church. The Bible, which the hands of ignorance 

5 " In Germany alone, in six years from the promulgation of the ninety- 
five theses at Wittenberg, the number of annual publications increased 
twelvefold." Rev. W. W. Ramsay, Methodism and Literature, p. 232. 

6 Paper read at the World's Parliament of Religions, Chicago, Septem- 
ber, 1893. 



THE ECLIPSE OF UNIVERSALISM. 303 

has overwritten into a hideous palimpsest, is being 
read with something of its divine meaning, and as 
increasing light pours upon the sacred page, more 
and more men are learning to spell its blessed mes- 
sages correctly, as they were spoken or written at 
the beginning — as the ante- Nicene fathers read them 
— in harmony with man's intellectual, moral and af- 
fectional nature, and with the character and attri- 
butes of the Universal Father. 



XXIII. 

SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS. 

A few of the many points established in the 
foregoing pages may here be named: 

(i) During the First Century the primitive Chris- 
tians did not dwell on matters of eschatology, but 
devoted their attention to apologetics; they were 
chiefly anxious to establish the fact of Christ's ad- 
vent, and of its blessings to the world. Possibly 
the question of destiny was an open one, till Pa- 
ganism and Judaism introduced erroneous ideas, 
when the New Testament doctrine of the apokatas- 
tasis was asserted, and universal restoration became 
the accepted belief, as stated later by Clement and 
Origen, A. D. 180-230. 

(2) The Catacombs give us the views of the 
unlearned, as Clement and Origen state the doctrine 
of scholars and teachers. Not a syllable is found 
hinting at the horrors of Augustinianism, but the in- 
scription on every monument harmonizes with the 
Universalism of the early fathers. 

(3) Clement declares that all punishment, how- 
ever severe, is purificatory; that even the "tor- 
ments of the damned " are curative. Origen ex- 
plains even GcJienna as signifying limited and cura- 
tive punishment, and both, as all the other ancient 
Universalists, declare that "everlasting" (aionioii) 
punishment, is consonant with universal salvation. 

3°4 



SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS. 305 

So that it is no proof that other primitive Chris- 
tians who are less explicit as to the final result, 
taught endless punishment when they employ the 
same terms. 

(4) Like our Lord and his Apostles, the primi- 
tive Christians avoided the words with which the Pa- 
gans and Jews defined endless punishment aidios or 
adialeipton timoria (endless torment), a doctrine the 
latter believed, and knew how to describe; but they, 
the early Christians, called punishment, as did our 
Lord, kolasis aionios, discipline, chastisement, of 
indefinite, limited duration. 

(5) The early Christians taught that Christ 
preached the Gospel to the dead, and for that pur- 
pose descended into Hades. Many held that he re- 
leased all who were in ward. This shows that repent- 
ance beyond the grave, perpetual probation, was then 
accepted, which precludes the modern error that the 
soul's destiny is decided at death. 

(6) Prayers for the dead were universal in the 
early church, which would be absurd, if their condi- 
tion is unalterably fixed at the grave. 

(7) The idea that false threats were necessary to 
keep the common people in check, and that the truth 
might be held esoterically, prevailed among the 
earlier Christians, so that there can be no doubt that 
many who seem to teach endless punishment, really 
held the broader views, as we know the most did, 
and preached terrors pedagogically. 

(8) The first comparatively complete systematic 
statement of Christian doctrine ever given to the 
world was by Clement of Alexandria, , A. D. 180, 
and universal salvation was one of the tenets. 



306 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

( 9 ) The first complete presentation of Christian- 
ity as a system was by Origen (A. D. 220) and uni- 
versal salvation was explicitly contained in it. 

(10) Universal salvation was the prevailing 
doctrine in Christendom as long as Greek, the lan- 
guage of the New Testament, was the language of 
Christendom! 

(n) Universalism was generally believed in the 
best centuries, the first three, when Christians were 
most remarkable for simplicity, goodness and mis- 
sionary zeal. 

(12) Universalism was least known when Greek, 
the language of the New Testament was least known, 
and when Latin was the language of the Church 
in its darkest, most ignorant, and corrupt ages. 

(13) Not a writer among those who describe the 
heresies of the first three hundred years intimates 
that Universalism was then a heresy, though it was 
believed by many, if not by a majority, and certainly 
by the greatest of the fathers. 

(14) Not a single creed for five hundred years 
expresses any idea contrary to universal restoration, 
or in favor of endless punishment. 

(15) With the exception of the arguments of 
Augustine (A. D. 420), there is not an argument 
known to have been framed against Universalism for 
at least four hundred years after Christ, by any of 
the ancient fathers. 

(16) While the councils that assembled in va- 
rious parts of Christendom, anathematized every 
kind of doctrine supposed to be heretical, no oecumen- 
ical council, for more than five hundred years, con- 
demned Universalism, though it had been advo- 



SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS. 307 

cated in every century by the principal scholars and 
most revered saints. 

(17) As late as A. D. 400, Jerome says "most 
people" (plerique). and Augustine "very many" 
(quam plurimi), believed in Universalism, notwith- 
standing that the tremendous influence of Augus- 
tine, and the mighty power of the semi-pagan secu- 
lar arm were arrayed against it. 

(18) The principal ancient Universalists were 
Christian born, and reared, and were among the 
most scholarly and saintly of all the ancient saints. 

(19) The most celebrated of the earlier advo- 
cates of endless punishment were heathen born, 
and led corrupt lives in their youth. Tertullian 
one of the first, and Augustine, the greatest of 
them, confess to having been among the vilest. 

(20) The first advocates of endless punishment, 
Minucius Felix, Tertullian and Augustine, were 
Latins, ignorant of Greek, and less competent to in- 
terpret the meaning of Greek Scriptures than were 
the Greek scholars. 

(21) The first advocates of Universalism, after 
the Apostles, were Greeks, in whose mother- tongue 
the New Testament was written. They found their 
Universalism in the Greek Bible. Who should be 
correct, they or the Latins? 

(22) The Greek Fathers announced the great 
truth of universal restoration in an age of darkness, 
sin and corruption. There was nothing to suggest 
it to them in the world's literature or religion. It 
was wholly contrary to everything around them. 
Where else could they have found it, but where they 
say they did, in the Gospel? 



308 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

(23) All ecclesiastical historians and the best Bib- 
lical critics and scholars agree to the prevalence of 
Universalism in the earlier centuries. 

(24) From the days of Clement of Alexandria to 
those of Gregory of Nyssa and Theodore of Mop- 
suestia (A. D. 180-428), the great theologians and 
teachers, almost without exception, were Universal- 
ists. No equal number in the same centuries were 
comparable to them for learning and goodness. 

(25) The first theological school in Christendom, 
that in Alexandria, taught Umversalism for more 
than two hundred years. 

(26) In all Christendom, from A. D. 170 to 430, 
there were six Christian schools. Of these four, the 
only strictly theological schools, taught Universalism, 
and but one endless punishment. 

(27) The three earliest Gnostic sects, the Basil- 
idians, the Carpocratians and the Valentinians 
(A. D. 1 1 7- 132) are condemned by Christian writers, 
and their heresies pointed out, but though they 
taught Universalism, that doctrine is never con- 
demned by those who oppose them. Irenaeus con- 
demned the errors of the Carpocratians, but does 
not reprehend their Universalism, though he ascribes 
the doctrine to them. 

(28) The first defense of Christianity against In- 
fidelity (Origen against Celsus) puts the defense on 
Universalistic grounds. Celsus charged the Chris- 
tians' God with cruelty, because he punished with 
fire. Origen replied that God's fire is curative; that 
he is a " Consuming Fire," because he consumes sin 
and not the sinner. 

(29) Origen, the chief representative of Univer- 



SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS. 309 

salism in the ancient centuries, was bitterly opposed 
and condemned for various heresies by ignorant and 
cruel fanatics, He was accused of opposing Episco- 
pacy, believing in pre-existence, etc.. but never was 
condemned for his Universalism. The very council 
that anathematized " Origenism" eulogized Gregory 
of Nyssa, who was as explicitly a Universalist as 
was Origen. Lists of his errors are given by Me- 
thodius, Pamphilus and Eusebius, Marcellus, Eu- 
stathius and Jerome, but Universalism is not named 
by one of his opponents. Fancy a list of Ballou's 
errors and his Universalism omitted: Hippolytus 
(A. D. 320) names thirty-two known heresies, but 
Universalism is not mentioned as among them. 
Epiphanius, "the hammer of heretics," describes 
eighty heresies, but he does not mention universal 
salvation, though Gregory of Nyssa, an outspoken 
Universalist, was, at the time he wrote, the most con- 
spicuous figure in Christendom 

(30) Justinian, a half -pagan emperor, who at- 
tempted to have Universalism officially condemned, 
lived in the most corrupt epoch of the Christian cen- 
turies. He closed the theological schools, and de- 
manded the condemnation of Universalism by law ; 
but the doctrine was so prevalent in the church 
that the council refused to obey his edict to suppress 
it. Lecky says the age of Justinian was •• the worst 
form civilization has assumed. " 

(31) The first clear and definite statement of hu- 
man destiny by any Christian writer after the days 
of the Apostles, includes universal restoration, and 
that doctrine was advocated by most of the greatest 



310 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 

and best of the Christian Fathers for the first five 
hundred years of the Christian Era. 

In one word, a careful study of the early history 
of the Christian religion, will show that the doctrine 
of universal restoration was least prevalent in the 
darkest, and prevailed most in the most enlightened, 
of the earliest centuries — that it was the prevailing 
doctrine in the Primitive Christian Church, 



SUBJECT AND AUTHOR INDEX. 



Abulpharagius, 106. 

"Ad Autolycum," Theophilus, 191. 

Adialeipton, 36-38, 305. 

Adrian, Emperor, 87. 

Ad avit, Jerome, 266. 

Adult., Early Christianity, 49. 

"Adv. Arium," 249. 

"Adv. Man.," Serapion, 248. 

Ad virginem, 234. 

"iEneid," Virgil's, 46. 

"Against Celsus," Origen, 22, 56, 

57, 134, 140, 148, 150-154, 159, 162. 
"Against Priscillianists and Orig." 

275. 
Against Heresies, 83, 210. 
Age of Ages, 148. 
Agrippa, 74. 
Aidios, 36, 37, 39, 82, 115, 305. 

Aion-Aionios," Hanson's, 36, 40, 

150. 
Aionios, 8. 9, 36. 38, 39, 75, 79, 81, 

82, 87, 134, 148-150, 157, 166, 229, 

236. 241, 245, 264, 274, 283, 284, 

304, 305. 
Allen,"Cont. Christ. Thought," 4, 

19. 20, 94, 122, 127, 272, 276. 
Allen,"First Three Periods,"42, 54. 
"Alethes logos," Celsus, 143. 
Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem, 

119, 172. 
Alexander the VI, 52. 
Alexandria, 21, 104, 109, 297. 
"Alexandria, and her Schools," 

Kingsley, 105, 108. 
Alexandrians, 55. 
Alexandrine Christianity, Pure, 

25, 110. 
Alexandrine Fathers, 105. 
Alexandrine Library, 105. 



Alexandrine Schools, 103-105,297. 
Alexandrinus, Clemens, 111-128. 
Alford, 64. 
Allin, "Universalism Asserted," 

2, 25, 26, 56, 61, 72, 224, 225, 243 

252. 265. 
•'Ambassador, Christian," 252. 
Ambrose of Alexandria, 172, 195, 
Ambrose of Milan, 245-248, "Epist" 

lib. i, 246, "De fide," 246. 
Ambrosiaster, 248. 
Amru, 106. 

Anastasis, 167, 229, 252, 288. 
Anaxagoras, 103. 
Ancellus of Marcyra, 244. 
Ancient Law, Maine, 175. 
"Ancient Hist. Universalism," 1, 

72, 81, 167, 210, 230, 252, 255, 282, 

309. 
Ancient Univ. Schools, 173. 
Ancient Universalists, Saintly, 307. 
Angelo, Michael, 298-301. 
Angelo, M., Last Judgment, 299. 
A Notable Family, 226-243. 
Antapodotikos, 239. 
Ante-Nicene Christ. Library, 158. 
Ante-Nicene Age, 261. 
Ante-Nicene Christianity, 302-308. 
Anthony of Egypt, 20. 
Aperanto, 81. 
Aphthartos, 190, 
Apokatastasis, 123, 140, 229, 237, 

288, 304. 
"Apol.," Justin, 8, 80. 
"Apol.," Tertullian, 193. 
Apollodorus, 46. 

"Apol. Pamph., pro Origine," 154. 
"Apologia VitaSua," Newman, 55. 
Apostles' Creed, 7, 8. 



3" 



312 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 



Apostles' Immediate Successors, 

70. 
"Apostles'.Teaching of Twelve," 5. 
Arbela, Georgius, 256. 
Archelaus, 196. 
Aristotle, 41, 50, 113, 284. 
Arnobius, 22. 

Arnold, Matthew, 18, 28, 54. 
Asbestos, 79. 204. 
Asceticism of Oriental Origin, 20. 
Assemani, "Bib. Orient," 65, 215, 

217, 256, 258. 
Ateleutetos, 39, 283. 
Athanasias, 6, 57, 58, 62. 
Athanasius, 5, 166, 178, 205. 211,232. 
Athanatos, 37, 38, 81, 190. 
Athenagoras, 89, 97. 
Athenodore, 172, 200. 
Augustine, 2, 19, 21, 45, 62, 67, 101, 

179, 247, 250, 262, 271-281, 295. 306, 

307. 
Augustine and Origen Contrasted, 

272. 
Autolycus, 89. 

Bacon, 50. 

Badger's "Nestorians," 222. 

Ballou, H., 2d., Anc. Hist..l, 72, 
81, 167, 210, 230, 252, 255, 282, 309. 

Baring-Gould. 93. 

Barnabas, Epistle to, 5, 45, 74. 

Barsudaili, Stephen, 258. 

Bartholomew, 104. 

Basil the Great, 19, 56-58. 166, 211, 
226, 227, 231-235. 

Basilides, 90. 

Basilidians, 90, 308, 

Bassora, Salomo, of, 256. 

Baur, "First Three Centuries," 87, 
91, 93, 125. 

Bayle. "Dictionary," 138. 

Beausobre, 197. 

Beecher, Edward, "Hist. Doc. Fut. 
Ret., 2, 4, 8, 10, 38, 39, 57, 173, 
184, 203, 218, 223, 224, 270, 288. 

"Bib. Crit.," Davidson's. 145. 

"Bib., Max," Patrum, 76. 

Bigg, Denies Origen's Universal- 
ism, 69. 



Bible of Amiens, Ruskin, 83. 
Bigg, "Christian Platonists," 4, 

55, 57, 69, 91, 123, 149, 165, 173, 280. 
Bigg, Neo-Platonism, 44, 60, 189, 

143. 
Bingham, "History," 103. 
"Blessed Macrina," 226. 
"Blessing of Death," 247. 
Blunt, 4, 165. 
Blunt, Vestiges, 49. 
Boniface, Pope, 62. 
Bostra, Titus of, 244, 245. 
British "Quarterly Review," 166. 
Brown, Francis, 6. 
Brucker, "Hist. Crit. Philos.," 112. 
Bryennios Philotheos, 5. 
Bunsen, Hippolytus, 4, 8, 77, 83, 

86, 90, 136 : 167-182. 
Burnett, De Statu Mort., 59. 
Butler, Lives of Saints, 4, 103, 226, 

230. 

Caiaphas, 263. 

Canons, Condemnatory, Origen 

283-285. 
Canons, New Testament, 88. 
"Carmina," Greg., Naz.,63. 
Carpocrates, 74. 
Carpocratians,91, 308. 
Cassian, John, 250-252. 
"Causes of Corruption," Vaughan, 

67. 
"Catacombs," Northcote's, 28. 
Casaubon's, "Vestiges," 49. 
"Catacombs, Testimony of," 27, 29, 

304. 
"Catacombs, de Rossi," 28, 30. 
"Catacombs, of Rome," Kip's, 28. 
"Catacombs, of Rome," Mait- 

land's, 28, 
Catholic Hell, Heathen, 46. 
Catholic Opinion of Origen, 184. 
Catholic World, 184. 
Cave, Lives of Fathers, 4, 18, 231, 

233, 234, 247. 
Cave, Curious Error of, 233, 238, 
Cave, Historia Literaria, 283. 
Cave, Prim. Christianity, 4, 23. 143. 
Celsus, 14, 141, 145. 



SUBJECT AND AUTHOR INDEX. 



313 



Celsus, Against, 22, 56, 57, 74, 134, 

140, 148. 150-154, 159, 162. 
Chambre, A. St. J., 1, 72, 282. 
"Christian Biog., Diet, of," 3, 90, 

157, 209, 217, 228. 
•'Christian Doct. of Prayer," Lee, 

67. 
Christian History, Neander, 4, 8, 

10, 48, 55, 57, 72, 91, 103, 199, 208, 

215. 
Christian History, First Three 

Cent., Baur, 87, 91,93,125. 
Christian History, First Three 

Centuries, Lamson, 8, 10, 127. 
Christian History, Text Book, 

Hagenbach, 6. 
Christian History, Three Great 

Periods, Allen, 54. 
Christian Institutions, Stanley, 35. 
Christian Platonists of Alexan- 
dria, Bigg, 123, 181. 
Christ and Mankind, 4, 18, 121, 

124, 132, 135, 141, 169. 
Christianity Defended, 308. 
Christianity, Rapid Growth of, 21. 
Christianity, Cheerful, 17-25. 
Christianity Latinized, 299. 
Christ Preach, in Hades, 53, 61, 305. 
Chrysologus, Peter, 258. 
Chrysostom, 2, 5, 23, 25, 32, 48, 57, 

58, 212, 234, 251, 252, 268, 270. 
Chrysostom, Synopsis, 5. 
Church, First Three Centuries, 

Baur, 87, 91, 93. 125. 
Church, First Three Centuries, 

Lamson, 8, 10, 127. 
"Circumlocution," 56, 118. 
City of God, Augustine. 
Clement and Origen, "not Uni- 

versalists," 69. 
Clement of Alexandria, 5, 7, 16, 19, 

25, 45, 53, 57, 63, 66. 101, 103, 111, 

128, 296. 305. 
Clementine Homilies, 87. 
Clement of Rome, 5, 71, 73. 
Commentary, Mosheim, 4, 8, 23, 

47, 49, 57, 140, 155, 181, 283. 
Condemnation of Origenlsm, 282- 

295. 



Cone, Dr. Orello, 252. 
"Confessions," Augustine, 247, 

271, 274. 
"Conflict of Christianity," Uhl- 

horn, 17. 
"Conquer. Cross," Haweis, 18, 28. 
Constans, Emp., 12, 258. 
Constantine, Emp., 18, 21, 137, 260. 
Constantius, 178. 
Continuity of Christian Thought, 

Allen, 4, 19, 20, 94, 122, 127, 272, 

276. 
Contra Celsum, 140. 
Christianity, a Greek Religion, 24. 
Contra litteras Petiliani, 274. 
Conybeare's Paul, 48. 
Coquerel, Ath., "First Hist. 

Trans." 9, 25, 35, 48. 
Corruptions of Christianity, Priest- 
ley, 1, 19, 48. 
Corruptions of Christianity, 

Vaughan, 49, 67. 
Corruptions of Early Christianity, 

52, 53. 
Councils, Early Statements of, 15. 
Council, Fifth General, 211. 
Council, never condemned Univer- 

salism, 307. 
Council, Chalcedon, 15. 
Council, Constantinople, 15, 242, 

282. 
Councils, Ecclesiastical, character 

of, 290. 
Council, Home Synod, 286. 
Council, Nice, 15. 
Council, Rimini, 12. 
Council, Jerusalem, 282. 
Councils, Ancient, 15, 282, 290. 
Crane, Stephen, D. D., 299. 
"Credibility of Gospel History," 

Lardner, 4, 168, 182. 
Creed, Ancient forms of, 12. 
Creed, Apostles', 7, 8. 
Creed, Earliest, 5, 9. 
Creed, Earliest, in Greek, 16. 
Creed, Nicene, 11. 
Crombie, Alex.. Trans., 158, 178. 
Cudworth, "Intel. Philos.," 112. 
Cutts's "Turning Points," 27, 



314 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 



Cyprian, 7. 

Cyril of Alexandria, "Pasch.,' 
etc., 63, 255. 



Daille, 126, 239. 
Dale, Dr. A. W., 158. 
Damnation, Infant, 276. 
Dante, 30, 298, 299, 302. 
Darkness at Advent, 17. 
Davidson, Bib. Crit., 145. 
Dead, Condition not Final, 66. 
Dead, Gospel Preached to, 53, 61. 
Deane, W, J., "Pseudepigrapha," 

98-100. 
Dean Mansell's "Gnostic Here- 
sies," 58, 91, 93. 
"De Asceticis," 235. 
Decadence, Christian, 278. 
"De Civitate Dei," 273, 276, 277. 
"Decline and Fall," Gibbon, 21, 

47, 211, 222. 
"DeEccl. Theol., Migne, 62,82," 

111, 204, 205, 213, 226, 245, 249, 

263, 274. 
Demetrius, 130-137, 167, 168. 
Demosthenes, 234. 
"De passione et cruce Dom.," 62. 
"De Praemiis," 38. 
De Pressense, 4, 18, 121, 124, 132, 

135, 141, 169, 181. 
"De Principiis," Origen, 57, 140, 

145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 

157, 163, 160, 167, 187. 255. 
De Rossi, "Catacombs," 28, 30. 
Des Cartes, 50. 

De Spectaculis, Tertullian, 194. 
De Spiritu Sanctu, 206. 
Deterioration of Christian 

Thought, 260,281. 
De Trim, Hilary, 250. 
De Trinitate, Augustine, 274. 
De Usu Pat., 239. 
De vita funct, Statu, 40. 
Dialogue between Gregory and 

Macrina, 226. 
Bla 7rv/)OS KaOapaiVf 120. 
Diatessaron, Tatian, 74. 
"Dictionary Christ, Biog.," 3, 90, 



157, 209, 217, 228, 256, 262, 264, 

278, 2 "8. 
Dictionary, Historical, Bayle, 157. 
Didymus. 62, 166, 206, 263. 
AIAAXH TON AQAEKA 
AII02TOAON, 5- 

Dies Irae, 98. 

Dietelmaier, 4, 61, 287. 

Diodore of Tarsus, 240, 251, 255- 

257, 268, 270. 
DiodorusSiculus, 46. 
Diognetus, Epistle to, 82. 
Dionysius, 200. 
Dionysius, Halicarnassus, 47. 
"Divine Leg.," Warburton, 46. 
"Doct. and Person of Christ,'' 

Dorner, 4, 219, 220. 
"Doct, Hist, of Christ," Shedd, 

20. 197. 
"Doct. Future Retribution," 

Beecher,2, 4, 8,10, 38, 39, 57, 173, 

184, 203, 218, 223, 224, 270, 288. 
Doct., Mitigation, 53-54. 
Doct., Reserve, 55, 118, 305. 
Doederlein, 79, 223, 228. 
Dollinger, 38. 
Domitian, 171-255. 
Donnegan, 39. 
Dorner, Doct. Per. of Christ, 4, 

219-220. 
Doucin, 169. 
Draper, "Int. Devel. of Europe," 



Earliest Creeds, 5. 
Earliest Creed, in Greek, 16. 
"Early Days of Christ.," Farrar,64. 
Early Christianity, Adult., 49. 
Early Christianity, Cheerful, 17. 
Early Christ. History, Merivale,50. 
Early Christians, character of, 

224, 225. 
Early Years of Christian Church. 

De Pressense, 18. 
Eastern Ch., Stanley, 108, 176, 201. 
Early Funeral Emblems, 29. 
Early Days, Farrar, 64. 
Ebedjesu of Sabra, 256. 



SUBJECT AND AUTHOR INDEX. 



315 



Eclipse of Universalism, 296-303. 
Eclipse of Christianity, 298. 
Edinburgh Review, 49, 102. 
Eirgmos, 36, 37, 39. 
Eis tous aionas, 7, 75. 
Emblems in Catacombs, 29. 
Enchiridion, Augustine, 179, 273. 
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 185. 
Endless Punishment of Heathen 

Origin, 36. 
Endless Punishment, Origin of 

Doctrine, 36, 42. 
Enfield, "Hist. Philos.," 47, 48. 
Enoch, Book of, 44. 
Epicureanism, 42. 
Epiphanius, 45, 137, 170, 176, 178, 

209,210,265,290, 309. 
Epitaphs in Catacombs, 30. 
Erasmus, 234. 
Essays, Stanley's, 243. 
Esoteric Doctrines Held, 57. 
Eternal Hope, Farrar, 2, 40, 81. 
Eulogists of Origen, 181, 187. 
Eulogies of Anc. Universalists> 

224, 225. 
Eunomius, 287. 
Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., 5, 7, 19, 45, 

62, 129, 154, 166, 170, 195, 200, 203, 

252, 289, 291, 309. 
Eustathius, Dem., 170, 290, 309. 
Evagrius Ponticus, 254, 257. 
"Exhortation to Heathen," Clem, 

Alex., 119. 
"Expositor, Universalist," 47. 
Ezra, 45. 

Fabian, Pope, 172. 

Facts to be Remembered, 289. 

Facundus, 255. 

Family, A Notable, 226-243. 

Farrar, F. W— See "Early Days," 
"Eternal Hope," "Mercy and 
Judgment," and "Lives of 
Fathers," 2, 4, 33, 34. 76, 108. 126, 
150, 171, 212. 241, 247, 281, 295. 

Fatherhood, God's, 23. 

Fathers, Lives of, Cave, 4, 18. 

Fathers, Lives of, Farrar. 81. 

Fichte, 50. 



"Filius, Subjecietur," 236. 

Fire, Chastening, 212. 

Fire, Cleansing, 212. 

Fire, Consuming, 150. 

Fire, symbolizes purification, 117, 

120, 150, 154. 
Firmilian, 169, 170, 200. 
"First Hist. Trans.," Coquerel, 9, 

25, 35, 48. 
"First Three Centuries," Baur, 

87, 91, 93, 125. 
"First Three Per.," Allen, 42, 54. 
Floyer, Sir John, 100. 
Forever and further, 149. 
Frauds, Pious, 56, 57. 
Freedom of Will, Origen, 187. 
Freemantle, Canon, 262. 
Funerals, Early Emblems, 29. 

Galla Placidus, 33. 
Gehenna, 40, 41, 80. 
Gehenna, Purifying, 134, 152, 153, 

304. 
Georgius of Arbela, 256. 
Germanus, 237, 239. 
Germ, Greek, of An. Creeds, 16. 
Geschichte erst drei Jahr, Baur, 

87, 91, 93, 125. 
Gibbon, Milman's, 21, 47, 211, 222. 
Gieseler, "Text-Book," 4, 8, 55, 

56, 136, 209. 268, 283. 
"Glaph. in Ex.," 255. 
Gnostic Sects, Three, 90, 95, 308. 
Gnosticism, 91, 112. 
Gospel in Hades, 53, 61, 305. 
Grant, "Mountain Nestorians," 

216-223. 
Gregory the Great, 166-254. 
Gregory Nazianzen, 11, 57, 58, 63, 

211-215, 234, 259, 270, 289, 290. 
Gregory Nyssen, 11, 166, 211, 226, 

231-234, 235-243, 292, 309. 
Gregory. Pope, the First, 66. 
Gregory Thaumaturgus, 7, 201, 231. 
Greek Fathers Superior, 25, 306. 
Greek Germ of Earlier Creeds, 16. 
Greek New Test. Language, 51. 
Greek Words Defining Punish- 
ment, 36-44. 



316 UNIVERSALIS*! IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 



Grimm, Life of Angelo, 300-302. 
Grote's Plato, 55, 58. 
Grotius, 39. 
Guerike, 198. 

Hades, Restorative, 117. 

Hades, Gospel Preached in, 53, 61. 

Hagenbach, 4, 8, 42, 48, 67, 121, 199, 
215, 278, 283, 296. 

"Harnack's Outlines," 16, 95, 140. 
185. 

Hanson's "Aion-Aionios," 36, 40, 
150. 

Hase, 194. 

Haweis's "Conq. Cross," 18, 28. 

Heathen Origin of End. Punish- 
ment, 36-52. 

Hebberd, Rev. S. S., 298. 

Hefele. 76, 283, 285, 287. 

Hegel, 50. 

Hell a Pagan invention, 36-52. 

Heraclius, 172, 200, 258. 

Heresies, 83, 210,306. 

Hermas, Shepherd of, 76. 

Hermits, First Christian, 20. 

Herodotus, 46. 

Hesiod, 46. 

"Hexapla," 145.263. 

Hieronymus, 262, 265. 

Hilary, 45, 166, 249. 

"Hippolytus," Bungen's, 8, 83, 90, 
114, 170, 181, 188, 189-191, 281, 309. 

HistoriaDeorum, 98. 

Historia Dogmatis de Desc. In- 
feros, 61. 

Historia Literaria, 283. 

Histoire d' l'Ecole d' Alex., 108. 

Historical Transformations, Co- 
querel, 9, 25, 35, 48. 

History, Ancient, of Universal- 
ism, Ballou, 1, 25, 72. 81, 167, 210, 
282, 309. 

History, Doct. Fut. Pun., Beecher, 
2, 4, 8, 10, 38, 39. 57, 173, 184, 203, 
218. 223, 224. 270, 288. 

History, Christian Church, Baur, 
87, 91, 93, 125. 

History. Christian Church, Bing- 
ham, 103. 



History, Ancient Law, Maine, 175. 

History, Christian Church, GUs- 
eler, 48, 55. 56, 186, 209. 

History, Christian Church, Guer- 
ike, 198. 

History, Christian Church, Hag- 
enbach, 4, 8, 42, 48, 67, 121, 199, 
215. 

History, Christian Church, Jere- 
mie, 126. 

History, Christian Church, Lam- 
son, 8, 10, 127. 

History, Christian Church, Lard- 
ner, 4, 168, 182, 

History, Christian Church, Lyall. 

History, Christian Church, Mil- 
man, 20, 24, 25, 47, 48. 

History, Christian Church, Mosh- 
eim, 4, 8, 23. 47. 49, 57, 103, 140, 
155, 181, 250. 

History, Christian Church, Nean- 
der, 4, 8, 10, 48, 55, 57, 72, 91, 103, 
199, 208, 215, 

History, Christian Church, Rob- 
ertson, 4, 21, 44, 103, 134, 156, 166, 
212, 257, 261. 

History, Christian Church, Schaff 
4, 20, 31, 50, 131, 156, 252. 

History, Christian Church. So- 
crates, 4, 12, 46, 58, 177. 

History, Christian Ch., Sozomen. 

History Christian Church, Theo- 
doret, 222, 232. 

History, Christian Doctrine, 
Shedd, 20, 197. 

History, Christian Dogmas, Ne- 
ander, 250, 251. 

History, Critical Philos., Brucker, 
112. 

History, Endless Punishment, 
Thayer, 1, 50. 

History.Europ. Morals, Lecky,309. 

History. Manichzeans, Beausobre, 
195, 272. 

History, Martyrs and Ap„ De 
Pressense, 4, 18, 121, 124, 182, 
135, 141, 169. 

History, Jews, Milman, 46. 

Hitchcock, R. D.,6. 



SUBJECT AND AUTHOR INDEX. 



317 



History, Person Christ, Dorner, 

218, 220, 
Holmes, O. W., 97. 
"Holy Eastern Church," Neale, 

108, 176, 201. 
Home Synod, Mennas, 288. 
"Homilia Pasch.," 254. 
Hort's Two Dissertations, 14. 
Hours of Thought. Martineau, 85. 
Hovey, Alvah, "State of Impen. 

Dead," 70. 
Huet, (Huetii Danielis). 4, 150, 169, 

255, 265, 278. 
Haidekoper, "Christ's Descent," 

61, 112. 
Huidekope*. Indirect Testimony 

to Gos., 61. 

Ideler's "Olympiodorus." 284. 
Ignatius, 77, 170. 
Ignem aeternum, 9. 
Important Thoughts, 68. 
Indirect Testimony to Gos., Hui- 

dekoper, 112. 
Infant Damnation, 276, 277. 
"Intel. Devel. of Europe," 

Draper, 222. 
Intel. Philosophy, Cudworth, 112. 
Introduction, 1. 
In. to the Gospels, Westcott, 4, 42, 

43, 88, 98, 165, 182. 
Irenaeus, 7, 9, 10, 45. 83-87, 170, 808. 
Isaac of Nineveh, 256. 
Isocrates, 234. 
Inst. Theol. Christ., Doderlein, 

79, 223, 228. 

Jahn, Archaeology, 46. 

Jameson, Mrs., Legends of Ma- 
donna, 52. 

Jeremie, Hist. Chr. Ch., 126. 

Jesu, Ebed, 256. 

Jerome, 23, 45, 63, 103, 137, 166, 168, 
170, 187, 250, 262-268,278, 290, 307, 

"Jewel" Nestorians, 222. 

"Jewish Wars," Josephus. 36, 37. 

John the Grammarian, 106. 

Johannes Cassianus, 250-252. 

Josephus, 36, 87. 

Judas Iscariot, 54. 



Justinian, 187, 279, 283, 292, 309. 
Juvenal, 17. 

Kant, Im., 50, 

Katharsin, 238. 

Kitto, Cyclo., 145. 

Kingsley's Schools of Alex., 103, 
105. 108, 296. 

Kip's Catacombs, 28. 

Kid on Good Shepherd's Shoul- 
der, 28. 

Kirchengeschichte, Nieder, 208. 

Kolasin, 36, 39. 41, 66, 79. 116. 118, 
123, 283. 

Lactantius, 100. 

Lamson's "Ch. First Three 

Cent.," 8, 10, 127. 
Landon's "Manual of Councils," 

285-287. 
Lardner, 4, 168, 182, 245. 
"La Politique des Romains," 

Montesquieu, 46. 
Last Enemy Destroyed, 162. 
Last Judgment, Angelo's, 299. 
"Latin Christianity," Milman's, 

20, 24-25, 47, 48. 275, 280, 291. 
Latin Reaction Injurious, 19. 
Layard's "Nineveh," 222. 
Lecky, 239. 

"Lectures," Maurice, 124. 
Lee's Christ. Doct. Prayer, 67. 
"Legends of Madonna," Mrs. 

Jameson, 50. 
Leibnitz, 50. 

Leland's "Necessity," 46. 
Leonides, 129. 
Leontius, 150. 
Liddell, 89. 
"Life and Resurrection," Greg. 

Nyss., 226, 229. 
"Life of Blessed Macrina," 226- 

231. 
Lives of Fathers, Blunt, 4, 165, 

226. 
Lives of Fathers, Cave, 4, 18, 231. 

234, 238. 
Lives of Fathers, Farrar, 3, 13. 

217, 281 



318 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 



Livy, 47. 

Locke, 50. 
Longfellow, 87. 
Lying Defended, 60. 

Martineau, "Hours of Thought," 

35. 
Mansi, 285. 

Manual of Councils, 286. 
Martyrdom of Polycarp, 74. 
Martyr, Justin, 7,22,34. 
"Martyrs and Apologists," De 

Pressense, 4, 18, 121, 124, 132, 

135, 141, 169, 181. 
Matter, l'Ecole d'Alexandrie, 9, 

108. 
Maurice, F. D., 124. 
Maximinus, 131. 
Maximin, Emperor, 22. 
Max Muller, Theos. or Psych. 

Rel., 56, 115, 186. 
Macarius Magnes, 248, 257. 
Macrina the Elder, 231. 
Macrina the Blessed, 226-231. 
Magnus, 7. 

Maitland, "Ch. of Catacombs," 32. 
Magnes, Macarius, 248. 
Mangey, 38. 
Manichseans, 195. 272. 
Mansell, Gnostic Heresies, 58,91, 

93. 
"Manual of Councils," Landon, 

286, 287. 
Mar Abd Yeshua, 222. 
Marcellus of Ancyra, 244, 290, 309. 
Marcion, 82. 
Mariott, 81. 
Martin, Pope I., 258. 
Marius Victorinus, 249. 
Martial, 17. 

Maximus the Confessor, 258. 
Meaning of Scrip. Terms, 36-42. 
Mechri telous, 82. 
Mennas, 282. 
"Mercy and Judgment," Farrar, 

2, 40, 41, 66, 150, 295. 
Mercy and Judgment Identical, 163. 
Merivale, Early Christ. Hist., 50. 
"Meteorologia," Aristotie, 284. 



Methodism and Literature, 802. 
Methodius, 170, 210, 289, 309. 
Middleton, Letter from Rome, 49. 
Migne, De Eccl. Theol., 62, 82, 111, 

204, 205, 213, 226, 245, 249, 263, 

274. 
Milan, Ambrose, 245-248, 254. 
Milman's Gibbon, 21, 47, 211, 222. 
Milman, Hist. Christ. 24, 25, 48. 
Milman, Hist. Jews, 46. 
Milman, Hist. Latin Christianity, 

20, 275, 280, 291. 
Milner, 21. 

Minor Authorities, 200-210. 
Minucius Felix, 25, 45. 
Miracles, Celsus and Orig. 141. 
"Miscellanies," Clem. Alex., 111. 
Mission to Underworld, 53, 61. 
Mitigation, Doct. of, 58, 54. 
Modern Theologians Equivocal, 59. 
Montesquieu, "LaPolitique," 46. 
Mosheim, 4, 8. 23, 4 , 49, 57, 103, 

140, 155, 181. 252, 283. 
Muller, Max, 39, 56, 110, 114, 186, 

302. 
Murdock's Mosheim, 8, 47, 252 283. 
Musardus, 8, 47. 

Neale, 176, 201. 

Neander, 4, 8,10,48,55,57,72,91, 

103, 199, 208, 215, 250, 252, 258, 

259. 270, 283. 
" Neo-Platonism, " Bigg, 60, 68, 

139. 
Nero, 18. 

Nestorians, 216-223. 
Nestorian Liturgies, 218, 222. 
Newman's "Apol. Vita Sua, 1 ' 55. 
Newman's "Hist. Essays," 218. 
Newton, Bishop, 242. 
Nicene Creed, 4, 11, 12, 211, 242. 
Niceo-Cons. Creed, 11, 13. 
Nicephorus, 231, 283. 
Nicodemus, Gospel of, 63. 
Nieder, "Kirchengeschichte," 208. 
"Nineveh," Layard's, 222. 
Nisibis, School in, 103. 
Nitzsch, "Christ. Lehre," 67, 270, 
Northcote's " Catacombs," 28, 30. 



SUBJECT AND AUTHOR INDEX. 



319 



Notable Family, A, 226-243. 
Norton. Statement, 112. 
Not. et Frag. Magnes, 249. 
Novatian, "Trinity," 25. 
Numa, 46, 47. 

CEconomy, Doctrine of, 53. 

CEcumenical Council, Fifth, 211. 

Oehler, Dr. Franz, 229. 

Olshausen, 225, 

Omar, 106. 

Olympiodorus, 284. 

01ympius,the Monk, Dialogue, 226. 

Opsopoeus, 97. 

Oracles, Sibylline, 14. 

"Oratio Catechet. Magna," Greg. 

Nyssen, 241. 
"Oratio de Mortuis,"Greg. Nyssen, 

242. 
Oriental Asceticism, 20. 
Oriental Liturgies, 218, 222. 
Origen, 7, 9, 14, 19, 22, 25, 41, 45, 

53, 55, 56, 57, 62, 63, 68; 129-187. 
Origen, Second, 201, 235, 296, 306, 

308. 
Origenism. Condemnation of, 282- 

295. 
Origenism, 210. 

Origin Doct. End. Punishment, 36. 
Orosius, 273. 
"Outlines," Harnack, 95. 
"Oxford Tracts for Times." 192. 

Padeiai, 116, 118. 

"Paedag." Clem. Alex., 116, 118, 

120, 123. 
Palladius, 200. 
Pamphilus, Apol. pro Origine, 

154, 166-170, 202, 263, 289, 309. 
Panarion, 210. 
7ravra Iv 7racriv, 209 
Pantaenus, 103-4. 
Pantheism, 113. 
Pastor of Hermas, 76. 
"Patrologise," Migne's, 62, 82, HI, 

204, 205, 213, 226; 263, 274. 
Paul of Thebes, 20. 
Pericles, 234. 
"Perpetua, Acta St.," 66. 



Persecution, Work of Augustini- 

anism, 281. 
Petavius,212. 
Peter of Sebaste, 226, 228. 
Pfaffian Fragment. 86. 
Pharisees, Opinions, 36. 
Phillips, Wendell, 197. 
Philo Judaeus, Views of, 87, 38. 
Philosophumena, 189. 
Philotheos Briennius, 5. 
Photius, 210, 239. 
Pierius, 201. 
Pious Frauds. 56, 57. 
Plato, 19, 39, 47, 55, 58, 112. 
Platonism, 113. 
Pliny, 17, 21, 35. 
Plumptre, Dean, 4, 41, 61, 65, 67, 

167, 182, 217, 242, 264, 288. 
Plutarch, 46. 
Polybius, 46. 
Polycarp, 73. 
Pond, Dr.'s, Misrepresentation, 

177, 187. 
Ponticus, Evagrius, 254. 
Post-Nic. Age Deteriorated, 261. 
Prayers for the Dead, 53, 65, 305. 
Priestley, Corruptions of Christ'y, 

48. 
"Primitive Christianity," Cave, 4, 

23, 143. 
Primitive Christianity, Horta- 
tory, 304. 
Procopius, 290. 
"Pseudepigrapha," Deane's, 98, 

100. 
Ptolemy Soter, 106. 
Punishment, Greek word for. 86,37, 

39, 41, 66, 79. 116, 118, 123, 288. 
Punishment not Endless, 82. 
Punishment Purificatory, 17, 127, 

238, 304. 

TTVp pOVLKOV, 17. 

Pusey, Concessions of, 257. 

Quadratus, 87. 
Quarterly, British, 166. 
Quarterly, Universalist, 1, 251, 252, 
268, 297. 

Ramsay, W. W., 302. 



3 2o UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. 



"Rationalism in Europe," Lecky, 

239, 309. 
Redepenning, "Origines," 173. 
"Refutation of Heresy." Hippoly- 

tus, 8, 83, 90, 114, 170, 181, 188, 

189-191, 261, 309. 
"Reliquiae Sacrae," Routh, 171, 203, 
Renaudot's "Oriental Liturgies." 

221. 
Reserve, Doctrine of, 55, 118, 305. 
Reuss, 180. 

Review, Edinburgh, 49, 102. 
Rhet., Aristotle, 41, 50, 284. 
Righteous Pray for Wicked 

Dead, 96. 
Robertson, Hist., 4, 21, 44, 103, 

134, 156, 212, 257, 261. 
Romulus, 46. 
Rosenmuller, 274. 
Rothe, 76. 

Routh, "Reliq. Sacrae," 171, 203. 
Rufinus, 7, 72, 214, 239, 255, 262. 
Ruskin, John, 33. 

Saints, Sins of, 4, 103. 

Salomo of Bassora. 256, 257. 

Sand, George, 281. 

Savonarola, 52. 

Sawyer, Thos. J., D. D., 1. 

Schaff, Hist. Christ. Ch., 4, 20, 31, 

50, 131, 136, 166, 212, 240, 252, 261, 

270, 278, 279. 
Schelling, 50. 

Scholars, Test, of, to Origen, 182. 
Schools, Theological, 103, 105. 
Schopenhauer, 301. 
Scripture Terms, Meaning of, 36. 
Seneca, 47. 

Septimus Severus, 129. 
"Sermon. Catech. Magnus," 237. 
Sharpe, Samuel, 75. 
Shedd, W. T., Errors of, 197. 
Shedd, W. T., Hist. Christ. Doct., 

20, 197, 252. 
Shepherd of Hermas, 76. 
Sibylline Oracles, 14, 57, 98-102. 
Sin, Penalties of, 212. 
Sixtus, Carus, 31. 
Sodom Restored, 265. 



Socrates, "Eccl. Hist.," 4. 12. 46,58 

177. 
Solom. Parab.,38. 
Solon, 55. 
Spinoza, 50, 
Spiridion, 281. 
Spirits in Prison, Plumptre, 61, 

167, 289. 
Stanley, Dean, "Eastern Church," 

108, 176, 201. 
Stanley, Dean, Christ. Inst., 85. 
Stanley, Dean, Essays, 243. 
" Statement of Reasons," Norton, 

112. 
" Sta^e Impen. Dead," Hovey, 70. 
Statius Quadratrus, 73. 
Stephanus of Edessa, 256. 
Stephens's "Thesaurus." 88. 
Stieren's "Irenaeus," 94. 
Strabo, 47. 
"Stromata," Clem. Alex., 57, 113, 

116 117,118,120.123. 
"Stromata," Origen's,63. 
Subjection Universal, 160. 
Suetonius, 17. 
Sunday, Primitive, 21. 
Summary of Conclusions, 304-310. 
Suppressio Veri, Cave, 233, 238. 
Suppressio Veri, Lecky, 309, 
Suppressio Veri, Shedd, 197. 
Swete, Prof. J. B., 217. 
Sweetness and Light, 19. 
Symbols in Catacombs, 29. 
Synesius Defends Lying, 60. 
"Synopsis," Chrysostom's. 5. 

2IBYAAIAKOI XPHMOI 

96. 

Tacitus, 17, 35. 

Taine, 17. 

Tamerlane, 218. 

"Tarquin of Jonathan," 40. 

Tatian, 45. 74. 

Tatius, 46. 

Teaching of Twelve Apostles, 5. 

Tennyson, Alfred, 3. 

Tertullian, 7, 10, 11,21,22,45,62, 

66, 191, 195, 307. 
Testimony of Catacombs, 27, 29, 



SUBJECT AND AUTHOR INDEX. 



321 



Testimony of Scholars, 182. 
"Text Book," Gieseler's, 48, 55, 58, 

136. 209. 
"Text Book," Hagenbach's, 4, 8, 

42, 48, 67, 121, 199, 215. 
Thanaton, 38, 74. 
Thayer, T, B., D, D., 50, 261. 
Thecla, 226. 
Theoctistus, 172. 
Theognostus, 201. 
Theotinus, 179. 
Theodorus, 214. 
Theodore of Mopsuestia, 216, 219, 

223,240,252,268. 
Theodoret the Blessed, 222, 232, 

252, 254. 
Theodosius, 211, 214. 
Theological Schools, 103-4, 308. 
Theology, Doederlein, 223, 8. 
Theology of Universalism, 50. 
Thesaurus, Stephens', 88. 
Theophilact, 169. 
Theopilus, 170, 176. 
Theoph. of Alex., 60, 191, 265, 290. 
Theophilus of Antioch. 89. 
"Theosophy, or Psych. Rel.," 56, 

115, 186. 
Third Century Group, 188. 
Thomas ot Celano, 98. 
Three Periods, Allen, 42, 54. 
Tillotson, Equivocal, 59. 
Tillemont, 244, 245. 
Timoria, 36, 37, 39, 41, 116, 118, 123. 
Timotheus II, 65. 
Tischendorf, 75. 
Titus of Bostra, 244-5 
Transition of Christianity, 260. 
True Discourse, Celsus, 143. 
Trypho, Dialogue, 78. 
Turning Points, Cutts, 27. 
Two Dissertations, Hort, 14. 
Two Kindred Topics, 61. 
Tytler, Univ. Hist.. 49. 

Uhlhorn, Conflict Christ, with 
Paganism, 17, 65, 68, 143. 



Ueberweg, 250, 259. 

Underworld, Christ's Mission to, 61. 

Unity in Diversity, 220. 

Universal History, Tytler, 49. 

"Universalism Asserted." Allin, 
2, 25, 26, 56, 61, 72, 224, 225, 243, 
265. 

Universalism, Attempts to Sup- 
press, 282-295. 

Universalism, Anc. Hist., Ballou, 
1, 25, 72, 81, 167, 210, 255, 282, 309, 

Universalism, Eclipse of, 296-305. 

Universalism of Greek Origin, 25. 

Universalism, many roads, to 220- 
257. 

Universalism, Resurrection of, 300. 

Universalism Submerged, 295. 

Universalism Never Condemned, 
286-289. 

Universalist Expositor, 47. 

Universalist Quarterly, 1, 52, 65, 
82, 251, 252, 268, 297. 

Universalist, The, 299. 

Unsuccessful Attempts to Sup- 
press Universalism, 282. 

Usher and Wake, 66. 

Valentine, 92. 
Valentinians, 92, 308. 
Vaughan's Corruptions, 49, 67. 
Victorinus, Marius, 249. 
Virgil's iEneid, 46. 

Wake, Arch, 66. 
Warburton, Div. Leg. 46., 
Westcott, 4, 42, 43. 88, 98. 165, 182. 
"What is of Faith," Pusey, 257. 
Whittier, J. G. 97. 
Wigglesworth, M., 277. 
Windet, 40. 

Withrow, Catacombs, 28. 
Wordsworth, Dean, 188. 

Zoroaster, 20. 

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